Grumpy old Sylvester Stallone is back, generously sharing the ring in a bighearted “Rocky” reboot.
Unbeknownst to me, “Rocky” movies have been multiplying like socks in the dryer. I never considered these films an exalted franchise — like James Bond or “Star Wars” — because they’re so dumb, so corny, so all-American and populist. Yet the 1976 forebear won Oscars for director, editor, and picture (in the latter category defeating “Taxi Driver,” “Network,” and “All the President’s Men”).
“Creed” is the seventh installment in a franchise almost four decades old. Despite critical pummelings and disrespect, it keeps getting up from the canvas, bloodied but unbowed, to reliable cheers.
What’s the key to its success? Like its hero (once Balboa, now Creed), it believes in itself. And there’s nothing more American than that.
For those with no prior knowledge of these triumph-of-the-underdog boxing melodramas, don’t worry. I saw only parts of the Philadelphia soap opera, but the prior six are recapped in this new origin story.
In brief, the illegitimate son Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), of Rocky’s old nemesis/pal Apollo Creed, seeks self-validation in the ring, just like our past hero of the ’70s malaise era.
But “Donnie” (his nom-de-gym) is a different cat, slick and fluent in social media, raised in an L.A. mansion by Creed’s widow (Phylicia Rashad), more square than street — as noted by his musician love interest (Tessa Thompson, of “Dear White People”). Amateur boxer Donnie wants respect, to prove he’s not a mistake, so he naturally seeks out training advice from grizzled old Rocky (Stallone, now 69, as was Burgess Meredith in “Rocky”).
You can write the rest. “Creed” is a film unburdened by surprises — or any serious consideration of brain damage and CTE, which will have to wait for “Concussion.” Great emphasis is placed on the inevitable training montages — right down to chasing chickens.
All the past “Rocky” plots are woven into this one: running stairs, pet turtles, arrogant champions (real English pugilist Tony Bellew as “Pretty” Ricky Conlan), sudden knockdowns, miraculous recoveries, split decisions after 12-round bouts saved by the bell. “Creed” is a 50-pound heavy bag of clichés, yet the preview audience I watched it with loved it.
Amid such relentless hokum and uplift, is there anything realistically grounded in our age of #BlackLivesMatter? Writer-director Ryan Cooglar was hired on the strength of his recent “Fruitvale Station,” about the real police killing of an unarmed black Bay Area youth.
But “Creed” isn’t interested in such flaws; all gripes or grievances here are swiftly overcome. It’s only in the first few minutes of “Creed,” a 1998 prologue, that we see young black boys in a juvenile detention facility, warehoused for future imprisonment, from which Adonis is miraculously delivered. One has to suspect that Cooglar has read “Great Expectations” in this regard, with Rocky his Magwitch. Adonis is clearly meant for better things — i.e., more sequels, with the ex-champ whispering in his ear.
In preparation for “Spectre,” I read Simon Winder’s excellent 2006 cultural history of James Bond, “The Man Who Saved Britain,” which contrasts 007’s fantasy heroics with England’s loss of empire. In books and movies, the suave killer provided a kind of consolation for his nation’s humiliating postwar collapse.
Bond became a palliative projection of everything that the U.K. no longer was. So it is with “Rocky.” As economists now tell us, the great decline of our middle class (and unions) began before Reagan and Wall Street deregulation. The gutting of the American dream — self-belief, striving, Horatio Alger, etc. — sprang from the same compensatory moment of Rocky’s blue-collar triumph. Since then we’ve been sold the myth that hard work and moral fiber will raise your station. (Hence the patriotic kitsch of “Rocky III” and “IV” during the triumphalist ’80s.)
Adonis, however likeable, is a spoiled rich kid mentored by a wealthy old codger. He finds success by learning to be humble, disciplined and respectful. Unlike his father (plainly modeled on Muhammad Ali), Adonis isn’t uppity or brash, and white America will cheer him for that. For that older, non-urban audience, “Creed” offers the reliable pleasures of formula and nostalgia. (Though Bill Conti’s famous theme song is only suggested, never reprised.)
Stallone’s broken-down presence supplies the continuity: Never a great actor, his stiffness now suits Balboa’s sad widowed modesty. And there are flashes of the core shyness to his character that was best expressed in the original with Talia Shire. “Creed” does make you miss her, Meredith, and Carl Weathers (Apollo is seen in the YouTube clips his son studies obsessively), and some fans might be disappointed by the lack of a Dolph Lundgren cameo. Don’t worry: That surely lies just around the corner in “Creed II.”
“Creed”
Rating: PG-13, profanity, violence, adult themes.
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Everett Stadium, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Thornton Place Stadium 14, Woodinville, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor Plaza
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