The sixth installment in the Rocky series (despite the absence of a Roman numeral to remind us) comes thirty years after the first one and sixteen after the fifth. It will stand as a serviceable definition of "retarded." Written and directed by its sixty-year-old star, Sylvester Stallone, it wants nothing but to turn back the hands of time. Oh, Stallone may, in observance of auld lang syne, put his sanctified screen wife into the cold hard ground ("woman cancer"), and thus restrict Talia Shire, still listed in the credits, to youthful flashbacks. But what man, after all, with washboard abs and with veins bulging in his shoulders and biceps, could abide to be saddled with an old bag his own age? He can always get an eyelift, dip into the hair dye, put on the same hat, run up the same steps to the same music, replace the old Ugly Duckling with a younger Ugly Duckling (Geraldine Hughes, no spring chicken, but nonetheless a quarter-century his junior), and if the script says so, if wishful thinking wishes it, he can still give as good as he gets in a risible "exhibition match" against the current undefeated, but unrespected, heavyweight champ (former light-heavyweight champ, Antonio Tarver). Skill vs. Will, it's billed as, and no chance to mistake which is which. By rights, of course, Stallone ought to have taken over the Burgess Meredith role and left the fighting to, say, Hilary Swank. The glaring irony of it is that, while the on-screen Stallone is supposed to be the personification of heart and desire, the off-screen Stallone can only have been motivated by the thing that motivates his on-screen opponent and supposed opposite: lust for a big payday. Burt Young, Milo Ventimiglia. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.