I absolutely love the Rocky movies. Of the seven films within the Rocky canon, I only don’t like Rocky V, the one Sylvester Stallone himself says was a cash-grab mistake. But I love the other six films, from the excellent Rocky and Creed to the insane but hilarious Rocky III and Rocky IV. There is something about the charm of Rocky himself that make the movies so fun to watch, and Stallone seems to have been born to play the endearing character. But the character of Rocky, like many characters in fiction, did not come from nowhere. Stallone, who also wrote the original Rocky film, was inspired by the real life boxer Chuck Wepner, who nearly lasted 15 rounds in the ring with one of the greatest boxers of all time, Muhammad Ali.
Chuck is a biopic that tells the story of Wepner’s career and the impact that both the Ali fight and the success of the film Rocky had on him. Wepner, played by Liev Schreiber, is a small-time boxer who barely keeps his marriage together through his problems with drugs, alcohol and women. When he is given a shot at Muhammad Ali and manages to do far better than anyone assumed, causing newbie writer Sylvester Stallone to write a film based on him, his arrogance shoots through the roof, pushing his loved ones further away from him and spiraling him into a drug-fueled and lonely life.
While the premise of Chuck was at least somewhat interesting to a huge Rocky fan such as myself, I quickly found myself bored by the film as a whole. And I feel like this is the hardest type of movie for me to describe. No aspect of the film is abrasively bad, but in no way is anything that happens even remotely interesting. Take the performances. Schreiber, Elizabeth Moss, Naomi Watts, Ron Pearlman, Jim Gaffigan and more all do a fine job in their roles. But I can’t think of a single moment in the film that didn’t stop my eyes from glossing over. At no moment in the movie did anything capture my attention.
And that makes it not only extremely difficult for me to talk about the film, but also very difficult to score. I can’t really bash the film for the way its story is structured, seeing as the movie is based on true events. But I also can’t say I found it interesting, because I definitely didn’t. The dialogue is super forgettable (I don’t think I remember a single thing any of the characters said), cinematography standard and music unremarkable.
Every aspect of the film is like the color beige. It’s fine, and I can't really complain about it, but I wouldn’t want a wardrobe that was all beige. This film lacks the cinematic color to make it stand out in any facet. All I could think the entire movie was that I’d rather be watching Rocky. And, in a couple of months, I’ll bet you anything that I won’t even remember I saw this movie.
Grade: C-
Chuck is a biopic that tells the story of Wepner’s career and the impact that both the Ali fight and the success of the film Rocky had on him. Wepner, played by Liev Schreiber, is a small-time boxer who barely keeps his marriage together through his problems with drugs, alcohol and women. When he is given a shot at Muhammad Ali and manages to do far better than anyone assumed, causing newbie writer Sylvester Stallone to write a film based on him, his arrogance shoots through the roof, pushing his loved ones further away from him and spiraling him into a drug-fueled and lonely life.
While the premise of Chuck was at least somewhat interesting to a huge Rocky fan such as myself, I quickly found myself bored by the film as a whole. And I feel like this is the hardest type of movie for me to describe. No aspect of the film is abrasively bad, but in no way is anything that happens even remotely interesting. Take the performances. Schreiber, Elizabeth Moss, Naomi Watts, Ron Pearlman, Jim Gaffigan and more all do a fine job in their roles. But I can’t think of a single moment in the film that didn’t stop my eyes from glossing over. At no moment in the movie did anything capture my attention.
And that makes it not only extremely difficult for me to talk about the film, but also very difficult to score. I can’t really bash the film for the way its story is structured, seeing as the movie is based on true events. But I also can’t say I found it interesting, because I definitely didn’t. The dialogue is super forgettable (I don’t think I remember a single thing any of the characters said), cinematography standard and music unremarkable.
Every aspect of the film is like the color beige. It’s fine, and I can't really complain about it, but I wouldn’t want a wardrobe that was all beige. This film lacks the cinematic color to make it stand out in any facet. All I could think the entire movie was that I’d rather be watching Rocky. And, in a couple of months, I’ll bet you anything that I won’t even remember I saw this movie.
Grade: C-
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