Three laughs: Rocky IV

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #38:
Rocky IV (USA, 1985)
Director: Sylvester Stallone

So, as many movie directors these days have too much time on their hands, many have started to recut some of their films they feel didn't really work in their first form. Francis Ford Coppola is working on Godfather III, Steven Soderbergh has probably already gone through half of his filmography, and Sylvester Stallone has Rocky IV.

But why Rocky IV? It's as close to perfection as anything Stallone has ever made, and Creed notwithstanding, my favorite of the never-ending Rocky series. It turns out Stallone has changed his mind about Paulie's robot and he explains he doesn't like it any more. So, it would seem Stallone would cut out some of the movie's bizarreness and make it just a so-so melodrama, which the Rocky saga already has in abundance.

Well, here at Last Movieblog we are undoubtedly pro-robot. Stallone may recut all he wants but we will always have the original version (Right? He's no George Lucas, right?), so let's have a look at some of the laughs offered by the Rocky Ivee.

 

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Before the movie has even settled to be a metaphor for the fight against the US and the Soviet Union, we see Ol' Rock has become a wealthy man since his underdog days. He lives in a huge mansion with his family. In fact, he even buys his friend Paulie (Burt Young) an expensive birthday gift. But he doesn't get the sports car he wanted, he gets a weird, bug-eyed robot that's probably meant more for Rocky's young son. In fact, the reason the robot is in the movie is that it's a helper tool that Stallone's actual son used for his autism.

Nevertheless, there's a big laugh coming on when inexplicably Paulie has switched the robots controls later on, so it uses a chirpy female voice and serves him beer. Knowing the background makes it even doubly bizarre that Stallone implies Paulie would use his robot for sex.  

2. I always enjoy Dolph Lundgren and feel like, as an actor, he got served the short stick and could have given so much more in his heyday. The scene when he's raised to his fight with Apollo Creed is carried by his face of confusion when he sees a Las Vegas -style gaudy James Brown musical number with small airplanes in the roof, showgirls, acrobats, and some sort of giant golden calf statue. Is Stallone implying that Americans are worshipping a false god? The sneeding way Lundgren delivers his line "You will lose" to Creed who he's about to kill in the ring, is also nothing short of magnificent.

3. A usual critique of the movie is that it's half montages set to the cheesiest arena rock the 80's had to offer. My personal favorite is the one set to Robert Tappert's No Easy Way Out where Rocky is driving around with tears on his faces thinking about his friend Apollo and the homoerotic scenes in Rocky III when they were running on the beach and bear-huuging in the waves. There's some shots of Adrian and classic Rocky training montages thrown in for good measure, of course, since the film is no homo.