Last night Jenny and I watched Creed together. It was one of the movies available on my plane ride to visit her in March, but not one I ended up getting around to watching. Since Muhammad Ali died on Friday night and because Jenny is actually a boxing fan I figured the stars were aligned to pick this one up to watch.

It didn’t take long for Jenny and me to become critical. Our big beef with the film is that the main character, Adonis Creed, is a spoiled rich kid who quits his job to live with him mom and not pay for anything. He doesn’t work the entire film other than the scene where he writes up a letter of resignation at work. I’m pretty sure he also uses the company’s copy machine to print it out which probably warranted a write-up.

As an aside, I’m also pretty sure the actor who plays his boss in this one scene is a referee later on. Nobody acknowledges it and this could just be a coincidence that the two actors looked the same and had very similar voices. Or more likely, an extra snuck onto the screen for two parts and gets to brag about it to women at parties.

Jenny had not seen any of the other Rocky movies so this was very fresh to her. It was easy enough to follow once you knew Rocky and Adonis’ dad used to beat each other up then became friends. As the son of “the most famous boxer ever” the younger Creed pretty much had his life setup for him. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone with an easier ride through life. He never even met his dad yet was raised by Apollo Creed’s wife; Adonis was the baby Creed made during an affair. Imagine that. You are the offspring of a famous athlete, don’t have to deal with his bullshit, and you’ve probably never pooped in a toilet without a bidet.

There’s really nothing too negative about Adonis Creed as a person other than I felt the movie took away from the blue collar feel of Rocky fighting a champ. Adonis lives in a mansion before moving to a crummy Philadelphia apartment where he meets the partially deaf love interest of the film who amazingly in one scene where they fight turns down the volume on her hearing aid. There’s really nothing underdog about him other than he’s a rookie other people are jealous of. Until other people showed they were scummier than he was, it was easy to root against Adonis succeeding.

My other big criticism of the movie was how out of shape the main villain looked in the final match of the film. I thought this was bad casting however some research (looking at Wikipedia) revealed that the guy is actually a real boxer who just happens to have a dad-bod.

The cinematography of the movie was great even if it didn’t save Anthony Bellew from looking fat compared to Michael B. Jordan. The highlight was definitely the fight scenes even if they were far more aggressive than a real life boxer. It wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting though if Adonis Creed fought like Floyd Mayweather running around the ring for 12 rounds.

I do think Sylvester Stallone winning awards for his performance is a little overblown. I could pretend to be old and spit whenever I talk and you wouldn’t know the difference. Last year was pretty much the “let’s give everyone overdue for an award the win” and I think Stallone was given the benefit in a rather weak class of contenders for Best Supporting Actor. I read his biggest competition was a blindfold from Fifty Shades of Grey.

The film did end in a good way to setup for several more films in the series. Predictably, we’re going to have to deal with seeing Rocky die on screen. Don’t get too attached to him.