About half an hour in Rocky V, Rocky, his son and Paulie are walking along a dingy Philadelphia street when one local resident excitedly gets his attention. "Rocky, remember me, I'm Bubba's mother. You used to use his head for a punching bag," she beams, to which our hero, who thus far in the series has been a beacon of humanitarianism, replies "Yeah, he had a good head." Wait a minute... did you just make Rocky Balboa a bully? That moment pretty much sums up how misjudged what was then intended as the final movie is. It's an oblivious, luggerheaded tarnishing of the Rocky legacy so bad even die-hard fans rarely admit it exists. Inexplicably directed by the original movie's John G. Avildsen, Rocky V attempts some sort of narrative symmetry, with Rocky and Adrian going bankrupt and forced to return to the Philadelphia slums, and while it's nice to see the series try and mix the status quo up a bit after three movies following the same formula, hearkening back to the Oscar winning original only really highlights how inept the handling is here. Everything about the film just doesn't work: a vicious fighting promoter enacting in a scheme that an eighties action villain would find too contrived; Rocky Jr. (now called Robert) getting picked on by the most cartoon-y bullies this side of Cool Cat; Rocky forsaking his son for some violent thug off the streets because we need to have a climactic street brawl (which is a travesty of an ending by itself). Avoid (like the two subsequent movies have done).
