Review: Creed (2015)

Jenna! I can’t believe you’re leaving me to start off this monstrosity of a post. I think by this point in our blogging adventure, it’s expected of me to have not watched an all time classic movie, but you?! Let’s just get this out of the way. Neither of us have ever watched a Rocky movie. Nor do we have much knowledge about boxing in general. So if you’re even still reading at this point, you’re probably wondering why on earth we even watched Creed. But it’s tipped for awards, and we’re trying to watch all the big awards movies, so we gave Creed a shot together!  In our defence we have Rocky on our Blind Spot list for this year and we are kicking it off with that one in January but yes it is true we have not seen a Rocky film between us and I think in watching Creed we may have inadvertently 'spoilered' ourselves. 

So, as far as I understand, Creed is the story of Apollo Creed’s son, Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) as he follows his father’s footsteps in becoming a boxing champion. To help him on his way he hunts down retired Rocky Balboa himself (Sylvester Stallone) who eventually agrees to mentor him.  Not that we could understand what he was saying!

For the record, this was so much fun to watch together, as we shared what little we knew about the Rocky series. I think everything we know can be summed up like this:

- There are some steps that Rocky ran up in the originals. They didn’t actually look that difficult, but then neither of us have tried.

- I think Rocky had a love interest called Adrian. Also pretty sure there’s a moment where we cries ‘ADRIAAAAN’. I don’t do a very good Stallone impression.

- According to Jenna, the famous Rocky music sounds a lot like the traditional wedding march. haha! OK play this and listen to the first part of this and tell me it doesn't sound like the wedding march......

It doesn't sound like the wedding march, and now you're going nowhere near any of my CDs at the wedding in May!

Moving swiftly on…

I thought Michael B. Jordan was absolutely perfect for this role! He’s everything I imagined a young boxer to be. He was confident, and a little arrogant, but he oozed so much charm at the same time. It was really sweet watching him in the early stages of his relationship with Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and I can’t wait to see more of him in the future.
I felt like we may have ruined this film for ourselves because I get the feeling nostalgia goes a long way with this one, that being said I did really enjoy the boxing scenes (it also reminded me that I forgot to review Southpaw!).  Michael B. Jordan was the perfect choice for Adonis, he was great and i'm so glad hes brought it back after the disaster that was Fantastic Four.

One thing I will rave about are the boxing scenes themselves. They were intense! Especially the final scene, which I of course won’t ruin. Jenna and I were literally shouting and cheering at the TV at that point, acting as referees. If you love the sport, don’t ever watch it with us. Seriously. Our favourite parts are the ‘hug it out’ moments as we call them!  I was scaring the bejesus out of the cats with my impressive boxing moves and every time the boxers 'hugged' we put on our rugged manly voices to 'yeah yeah hug it out' - I think we might actually be insane but its the most fun I've had watching a movie in a long time!  Can anyone actually explain why they hug?!

I just feel that my lack of knowledge/interest in boxing, coupled with the sad fact that I’ve never watched a Rocky movie ultimately hindered my enjoyment of the movie as a whole. I can certainly appreciate it for what it is, but it felt too long to me.

It did seem to go on a bit and I don't usually mind long films, a lot of the scenes just seemed a little dragged out where they could have been shorter but overall an entertaining watch that i'm guessing fans of the franchise will love.