New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Rocky II is unusual in at least one regard - it adds no new major (or significant minor) characters to the proceedings. Stallone graciously waited until Rocky III for the icy hand of The Grim Reaper to start bumping off his characters, so Rocky, Adrian, Apollo, Paulie, and Mickey are all there. Even local loan shark Tony Gazzo (played by creepy character actor Joe Spinell) and anonymous a capella street corner singer (the raspy tones and visage of Frank Stallone) make appearances.

What Rocky II doesn’t have is the same level of kooky eccentricities that make the first film so endearing and exasperating, in a roughly 3 to 1 ratio. This is most noticeable in the reduced screen time and slightly less abrasive manner of Paulie, Rocky’s long-time friend and eventually, brother-in-law. Burt Young inhabits one of the screen’s great grotesques to such a degree, it becomes quite possible to imagine that he isn’t acting. (Perhaps he is 20 years early in auditioning for a Harmony Korine movie?)

Paulie seethes with rage, self-loathing, bitterness, barely contained violent tendencies, and a supremely unhealthy love/hate relationship with his sister, Adrian. And yet, he is treated as an inevitable force of nature whose behavior is a given, much as Nick and Nora Charles’ constant tippling wasn’t a sign of alcoholism, simply the mark of good social drinkers. That Rocky puts up with Paulie for the course of the series (when the latter is as much to blame for Rocky’s eventual destitution as the champ himself) suggests masochistic tendencies of his own that deserve far greater analysis than I can supply here.

Moments like Paulie’s house-smashing freak-out in Rocky give the film the feel of a hoary B-movie crossed with outtakes from a Cassavetes-esque domestic drama. Like fellow early blockbuster Jaws, its pace has become downright leisurely with 35 years of hindsight. It’s a crowd-pleaser where the uplift and victory is in the underdog’s restored sense of self-worth. Rocky II, by contrast, is a soap opera for men, touching on everything from fears of fatherhood and emasculation in the home to the awesome ridiculousness of being able to pay cash for a house or a brand new black and gold Pontiac Trans Am.

In the aforementioned hour+ of plot particulars, Rocky recovers from his wounds, proposes to/marries/impregnates Adrian, goes on a spending spree (which ultimately inspires guilt), attempts to find stable work to avoid getting back into the ring (this culminates in him reduced to carrying the spit bucket at Mickey’s gym and being verbally abused, which ultimately inspires shame), and welcomes Rocky Jr. into the world, but not until after Adrian has emerged from the coma she slipped into during delivery. It’s such a breathless, browbeating first half that when the training montage finally kicks in, signaled by Rocky’s attempts to corral a chicken at Mickey’s behest, it brings an audible sigh of relief.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5