 There are certain movies that, when brought up, release a collective shudder from people who think about them. X-Men 3, Blade Trinity, The All-Female Ghostbusters, and of course, the movie of topic today, Rocky 5. But is this movie truly as bad as people have said it is over the years? Or is there some redeeming- no, it's bad. It's pretty bad. Let's talk about it. Before I dive in, I want to give a special shout out to Patreon user EdwardJCash, who recommended I Demanded I Watch and Review Rocky 5 for this video. You see, Edward is a myth-roll level supporter over on Patreon, so he gets to pick out a movie and I have to watch review and even tip my hat to him. And thank you for making me relive this horrible event in history. I rewatched Rocky 5 in preparation for this review with my children, my own flesh in blood. I made Sit Down and Watch Rocky 5. They had watched all Rockies before, so we naturally had to get to this point. Then we will move on to Rocky Balboa, then the Creed Trilogy. Well, the third one's in production. I gotta be honest, Creed III looks like it's gonna be Rocky 5. Which, out of all the Rockies to copy. Why go that route? Let's break it down. The plot of Rocky 5 is really, really stupid. Like so implausible that it makes you scratch your head. What were they thinking? It was once again written by Sylvester Stallone, but he did not direct this one. I believe it's the first Rocky movie up until this point that he did not direct. And I have to say, it doesn't look good. This looks the cheapest out of the Rocky films. I don't know the reason why. There's more of a soap opera quality to a lot of it. It just feels like a lesser production. And I understand, going from Rocky 4, you were gonna have a hard time up in the ante. I understand why Stallone wanted to take things down like 5 pegs. He basically went from fighting Apollo Creed in the first one and making a name for himself to saving the world. Like, he stops the Cold War with Russia by beating Ivan Drago on their home field. And then there's this whole speech, if I can change, if you can change, if we all can change, or whatever. It's sappy, it's silly, but it's still awesome. And Rocky goes up against some of the most larger-than-life characters known to man and somehow wins. Yes, it makes sense that Rocky 5 scales it way back. And tries to ground it again. But the way it's done is so half-hazard, so slapped together, and nothing really has time to breathe in this one. After the events in Russia, he cannot step foot in a ring without risk of dying. The guy's been hit in the head so many times, he has permanent brain loss. He's lucky to even be walking and speaking properly. I mean, as proper as Stallone can speak. And keep in mind, up until Rocky 5, these movies have been fired, complete hits. Every one of them, up in the ante, up in the odds, adrenaline is firing on all cylinders. And then with 5, we find out, okay, things are realistic. It doesn't make sense that he keeps going after these titans of the industry and walking away kind of unscathed. Sure people have died along the way, but Rocky seems to be doing okay. Not anymore. Now we've learned he's not going to be fighting, which means, oh shit, what is this movie going to be if there's no training montages or anything to celebrate? Like any big upcoming fights to look forward to? Well it means we're going to focus on the sun more. And it means we're going to be focusing on his new protégé, Tommy Gunn. Easily the worst foe Stallone has gotten up against. But in order to really ground these characters, we first have to break them down to nothing. Back to the basics. So in one of the dumbest plot points ever conceived, Pauly for some reason has the ability to sign documents on behalf of the family. I don't know who in the fuck thought it was a good idea to give the drunken uncle the ability to make life changing decisions for the family, but I guess if anybody would do it, it's the guy that's suffering from brain damage. And let's be honest, Adrian's always been kind of an idiot, so I guess fair there. So yeah, somehow the attorney has the power, via power of attorney, to just do anything he wants with the Balboa fortune. And he makes a bunch of bad investments in the stock market or in some housing shit. It doesn't matter. In the flip of a coin, the Balboas lose everything. Their fortune is gone. The mansion. The cars. Uncle Pauly's robot butler. Bye bye. And the family's forced to move back into their crappy old neighborhood again. I don't... Like you're telling me no one would help Rocky out. There's no investor or there's no people, no fans that would send him money or support. They wouldn't have like a charity event or anything to raise money for the Balboa family. It's just nope, the money's gone. You're back at square one. It was a implausible plot that is really hard to wrap your head around and it really sucked to watch the champion fall so far from grace. Especially when it wasn't even his own choices that led him there. It was just Pauly being Pauly. That's so Pauly. Coming soon to ABC Family. Balboa sees the bottom. He doesn't like how it looks down there and conveniently Tommy the gun comes along seeks out Balboa to be his coach to train him because he can be a star. He can be number one heavyweight champion of the world. Now this is going on, Tony Burton's character Duke who is this sleazy boxing manager keeps showing up to get Balboa back in the ring again for one more fight. One more fight with the champ. He's great. He's hilarious in this and clearly there was some inspiration taken from real life boxing managers. I think Don King comes to mind. I think I'm pretty sure he's channeling Don King here. Since they're back in the mean streets of Philly, Rocky Jr. is going to have to deal with some new kids in school. He's going to have to show that he can be an alpha dog or he's going to keep getting his lunch money taken. Literally, they beat him up and take his lunch money. The theme and the message for Rocky V is go for it. Don't sit on the sidelines. Don't think of the what ifs or the what has. Think of what you can do now today. Go for it. How do I know that's the theme? They say the phrase like 40 times. It's uttered just non-stop. Go for it, dad. Go for it. Huh. Huh. Huh. Rocky V so desperately wants to be like Rocky I and Rocky II again, but it just doesn't have the style, the substance, or the quality of the previous movies. Instead, it just waffles between the silliness and the campiness of the newer ones and the lack of charm the originals had. It just, it doesn't have its own identity. The only touching moment in the movie is a flashback with Mickey where they're chatting and he gives an inspirational piece of advice. That part is really well done. I liked it. It's kind of far and few in between though. Now even though this is a bad movie and it's the black sheep of the Rocky films, I will say rewatching it after all these years, I found myself enjoying it more. I don't like it, but I didn't hate it as much. I appreciate that Stallone was trying to tell an original story again. The fall from grace, picking yourself back up, because how high do you go with the character? I mean, he's beat the most ridiculous characters already. He's the heavyweight champion of the world. There's really nowhere to go but down. Now they could have just retired the character outright and been done at four, but we know that's not going to happen. There was tons of issues with Stallone in the studio. He doesn't own the rights to the character. So it's either Sly keeps making these damn movies until he's dead or the studio will do it without him. I don't know the drama with Rocky V or what went on behind the scenes. I just see the final product and I think his heart wasn't in it anymore. He didn't even direct the thing, so clearly he was kind of checked out. All that said, the final 20 or so minutes of this movie, it's good shit. It's good shit. Anything comes to a head when Duke decides to sign on Tommy Gunn, Rocky Balboa's protégé, and take him under his wing. Give him the lavish lifestyle he wants, the fast cars, the faster women, the money. The things that Balboa says they can achieve but it's going to take a while to get there. Tommy the gun doesn't have time to wait. He's the champion now. He needs to prove himself as the champ. This leads to an altercation at a bar where Duke is poking and prodding at Rocky to get in the ring and fight Tommy the gun in front of the world, multi-million dollar event. But Tommy's pride and ego gets in the way and he says I'll fight him anytime, any place, anywhere. Which was a mistake, as Duke wisely points out. You don't fight a street fighter in a street fight. My brother and I used to quote this part of the movie constantly because Tommy then fires back with, you don't own me, nobody does. He doesn't say that over the top but my brother and I always say things like more extreme than the originals so we'll be just like randomly doing something and I would know where my brother would be like you don't own me, nobody does. It's just hilarious and this fight is great. It all builds up. You have like the rap music and then it goes into the nostalgic Rocky theme a little bit. It's awesome. I love this. I love how they're like punching each other through fences and on cars and the audience is getting bigger. People in the crowd are coming over. And Rocky for the most part is just cleaning this guy's clock which I also like. It's really not that much of a challenge for him to kick the shit out of Tommy the gun and show why he is the number one boxing champ. Plus you have Rocky's kid who's in the audience go for it dad go for it. And he's got his dumb ass bling, his earring on the side and he's cheering him on. Adrian's probably there at some point. It doesn't matter. It's so good. And then we get the final crescendo where Duke is there, sleazy as all hell. Touch me an old suit. Touch me an old suit. Rocky looks away and then hits him with a haymaker, throws him off his feet onto a car, looks down and says, sue me for what? Last 20 minutes. Oh, it's good. It's good. Unfortunately there's a rest of a movie around it. But you know, it builds. At least it builds. It's a dumb film. It's definitely a fall from grace in more ways than one intentionally and unintentionally. And it would take Rocky Balboa or Rocky Five or Balboa or whatever they ended up calling it to kind of like sweep up the mass and make a class here movie again, even if it is a little bit dull in the long run. It still is, you know, we continue and we get a nice ending. Rocky Five, definitely the black sheep, definitely has not aged well, but my heart has healed on it a little. One went in to Rocky Five expecting another grand Rocky film where he trains in fights and what they got instead is kind of a subversion of expectations. Instead it's a movie about Rocky raising his son rights and about Rocky taking on this new guy and Rocky learning how to accept that he's not going to be the fighter he once was. It's a movie that wanted to be profound and deep but ultimately just didn't have the skill to get there. That's Rocky Five, watchable, disappointing, not horrible anymore, not as bad as I guess it gets the rap for being, but yeah, disappointing absolutely, frustrating even at times. But it's still Rocky, it's still Stallone throwing punches with some iconic music and sometimes that's all it takes. Alright, I want to thank you once again Edward J. Cash for recommending this movie on Patreon, become a Mithril member if you want, we're having some good times here. I'm reviewing shit that I've never even heard of and no one's watching, but you know what, you're getting your money's worth, I can say that much. Please think about subscribing if you haven't, I post tons of movie reviews and rants and whatever every single week on the channel, would love to have you, like the video if you had a good time and hopefully I'll see you around.