Rocky Balboa Reviews
Top CriticI know, I know, you're thinking, oh please, not Rocky again. I was thinking that too.
The ol' lug can't be blamed for wanting one last victory lap, but if you've got nothing to offer except benign nostalgia, just let the gloves stay on the glory-days shelf.
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| Original Score: 2/6
Even goodwill can't make this look like anything more than a glorified TV special. Surely it's time for the audience to throw in the towel?
As usual with Stallone's Rocky sequels, the schmaltz is unbearable, but the fight is plausibly handled, and Stallone's sincere sadness at growing older makes this an unexpectedly satisfying conclusion to the series.
We're only one round into the film and Stallone is already slipping in the old flashbacks.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Touchingly nostalgic, the sixth chapter in the saga of Sylvester Stallone's eternal underdog packs a far more powerful punch than anyone would have expected.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A sequel that is at once preposterous, unnecessary and weirdly entertaining.
| Original Score: B
Rocky Balboa scores a split decision: A familiar start, some flat-footed middle rounds and a solid, flailing finish.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The first four-fifths of the film is a meandering lead-up to the inevitable getting-in-shape montage, run up the steps and a big fight. Up until that point, all Rocky does is talk. And talk. And talk.
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| Original Score: C-
Nothing that happens here is particularly touching, exciting or funny.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Stallone has said this is it for Rocky -- even if the film is major box office hit, there will be no seventh outing. If that's the case, it's hard to think of a better sendoff.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's just good to see the guy, and it's good to revisit the character. And that's everything good to be said for the experience.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Ultimately, is Rocky Balboa necessary? Of course not. But neither are plenty of other movies that find their way to theaters, and this one at least provides some undemanding entertainment.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Shamelessly nostalgic, strenuously formulaic and utterly bereft of unforeseen developments, Rocky Balboa nevertheless has its modest charms.
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| Original Score: 2/4
I gotta admit that I had a pretty good time watching this 94th film in a series that started 30 years ago.
There were titters, yes. But to this viewer, sentimentality won by a knockout.
It's actually the best Rocky movie since the original -- a fitting and triumphant final chapter for one of the most iconic characters in the history of motion pictures.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Rocky Balboa isn't a response to Stallone's late-life crisis, it is his late-life crisis, right up there on the screen.
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| Original Score: 2/4
What sounds absurd in print -- a 60-year-old Balboa gets back in the ring with the reigning heavyweight champ -- is thoroughly, satisfyingly enjoyable on-screen.
Rocky Balboa is far from essential, and there are moments in it bad enough to make you wince. But I dare you not to feel at least a tiny little rush when that opening bell rings, and Rocky starts swinging one final time.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Even as Sylvester Stallone's long goodbye to the heroic underdog who made him famous descends from pathos into silliness, and from fairy tale into hallucination, you can't help liking the big galoot.
What makes this vanity project so pleasurable is that Stallone has written a script filled with wit, and even self-deprecation. In the end, there's no quit in Rocky Balboa. More alarmingly, there appears to be none in Sylvester Stallone.
| Original Score: 3/4
Rocky still has some life left in him, and so does the franchise. As Rocky himself might have said, who wouldda thunk?
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Rocky Balboa puts the anything-is-possible fairy tale to rest with a lot of heart, and a lot of hooey.
| Original Score: 2/4
OK, so it's not a great movie. But like its hero, it has a great heart.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Rocky Balboa is almost as hard to resist as it is to believe.
| Original Score: 3/4
The Italian Stallion gallantly fights one last time in Rocky Balboa, an endearing final chapter that has more in common with the 1976 original than any of the sequels.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The big surprise is that it also has just enough referential wit and nostalgic charm to keep the smiles coming through the schmaltz.
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| Original Score: B
The new old Rocky doesn't need a last-minute, come-from behind, rock 'em, sock 'em victory to give us a good time. You know what? I smell a sequel.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Rocky Balboa, the sixth (and hopefully last) installment in the underdog saga of the Italian Stallion, straddles the line between nostalgia and self-parody and frequently teeters toward the latter.
Above all this is a film for gluttons for punishment, for those who never ever can get enough of Sylvester Stallone. Everyone else, please leave the building.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Mock Stallone all you want. I want to also, but I can't. He understands that the character is much bigger than himself, an American emblem that will long outlive him.
| Original Score: 3/4
Stallone, sporting the triple-decker title of writer, director and star at age 60, ratchets down the volume and retains some of the legend's scruffy origins while making sure that it all comes together at the end with a Big Noisy Fight.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Surprisingly, Rocky Balboa is no embarrassment. Like its forerunners it goes the distance almost in spite of itself.
| Original Score: 3/5
Rocky Balboa, effortlessly reflexive and patently, even proudly, absurd, is a tough movie to dislike -- and believe me, I've tried.
Does Rocky Balboa deliver? Weirdly enough, it does: I was jumping out of my seat during Rocky's bout.
Well, whadda ya know? It looks like you can teach an old underdog new tricks.
Though Stallone directs with little visual inspiration outside the ring sequence, he sticks to the original's up-from-the-streets spirit and rejects the slickness that had crept into the franchise.
Just when you're ready to puke, the old Bill Conti theme ('Gonna Fly Now') kicks in -- are you feeling it? -- Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas. All together now: Rock-ee! Rock-ee!
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It turns out that the added years only benefit the character, making him seem touchingly new because he's so old.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
