I saw Rocky Balboa last Saturday. It’s been a week but I haven’t really thought about this movie too much since I saw it. That’s just how it was. My expectations were set way too high even though I knew going in that there was no way it could clear the bar I had set for it. Waited way too long and loved the older Rocky movies so much that I put this movie on a pedestal. A premature pedestal. And it didn’t help that working at Planet Hollywood surrounded me with everything Rocky for about a month before the movie.

So it was my mistake. I mean Rocky Balboa was most certainly better than Rocky V, but it couldn’t hold a steroid needle, a crazy Soviet accent or an Eye of the Tiger to Rocky IV. It seemed to me like a geriatric version of Rocky. Which it was I guess? Here’s Rocky, down and out but hungry and then here’s this woman who he’s chasing (even though it was almost impossible to believe) and then there’s Rocky training and then in the ring. It could have been great but there was just way too much other woman stuff going on. I mean Adrian was gone, they could have focused so much on Rocky and fighting and building up Mason “the Line” Dixon but instead they introduce a new love interest and… her kid? Are you kidding me? So Mason Dixon just coasts through the movie, never reaching the potential of an Apollo Creed or a Clubber Lang, an Ivan Drago, heck barely even Thunderlips.

I know there won’t be another Rocky movie after this one, but we really don’t need one. Rocky I-IV is all I’ll ever need. I was content before I even knew Stallone wanted to do this one. But I’m pretty sure at the time, I liked this movie a lot more than I can remember now. So heck, I’ll throw Rocky Balboa in there on occasion too. Just not as much. Maybe in a marathon or something. Like a Terententen Rocky All Day Marathon Blast. Now that sounds like a plan.

I’m currently watching: Saturday Night Live