Project Stallone: "Rocky II"

Rocky II
By Peter John Gardner

An paraphrased excerpt from a conversation I had last week with Kim:

"I'm thinking about abandoning Project Stallone."
"Why?!"
"I don't know. It's starting to bore me, nobody's really giving me any feedback, and I feel like I'm just repeating myself with a lot of these entries."
"You can't do that! I, for one, love reading them!"
"Yeah, but..."
"Stallone would keep pushing forward"
"Yeah, but..."
"What would Stallone do?"

Stallone would keep doing what he does best and with Rocky II, he does just that. In the first sequal to Rocky, Stallone returned to the character that he plays best after the dismal failure of his two post-Rocky forays into projects that were intended to sell him as a legitimate actor. Audiences didn't buy it. So here we see a pivotal moment in the career of Stallone in which Sly starts to play "safe" roles.

This installment picks up where the last one left off. Actually, it begins with the last ten minutes of the first one. We see the final fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed again (just in case you forgot the outcome), and the story picks up with Rocky's post-fight interviews and his trip to the hospital afterwards.

It turns out Rock-o might have suffered brain damage from being punched in the head one too many times. Kudos to Stallone (he wrote and directed this one) for actually providing an explanation as to why the character seems slightly retarded.

With that news in mind, Senor Balboa decides to retire from boxing and live the good life with Adrian. He buys a new car, that which he can't drive, some fancy-shmancy jewelry for Adrian, and a new house. As fate, or the plot, would have it, our hero does not know how to budget, and is forced to go to work in order to pay the bills. He works briefly at the meat processing plant where he used to beat the shit out of dead cows, and finally settles for a job as a grunt at Mick's boxing club.

Meanwhile, we find out that Adrian is pregnant. Not one to break tradition, Rocky still seems to be wooing her even after they've gotten hitched and gotten their groove on. "Yo, you like zoos? Yo, you know, I love the zoo. It smells so nice here when it snows. Yo. You know? You wanna hear a funny joke? I got tons of them. Yo."

Do lines like that work on women? Speak up, ladies.

Summing things up, Creed wants a rematch because even though the judges declared him the winner in the first fight, everyone else in the world felt the Rocky had won the fight. Creed is pissed. Meanwhile, at the boxing club, the young upstarts are harrassing Rock and calling him a coward and "The Italian Chicken" for staying out of the game and ignoring Creed's calls for a rematch.

It's not until Adrian has a near death experience while giving birth to Rocky Jr. that Rocky regains the urge to fight, and win, against Apollo Creed.

Like Rocky, I too felt disillusioned with not only Project Stallone, but other aspects of my life as well. I recently got rejected for journalist job with NLA, and it devastated me. I felt worthless. I felt like I had no marketable qualities, and I was destined to live the starving artist lifestyle for the rest of my life.

Then I watched this film last night.

Returning to what one does best may be repeating yourself in some aspects, but it's also playing to your strengths and selling yourself for what you do best. I'm sticking with Project Stallone even if it kills me, and it's definitely starting to hurt.

And so I got turned down for a higher paying job...so fucking what? It's not like that's the only one out there that fits my qualifications. Sure, I was bummed out for about a day, but Stallone has taught me to not give up. I'm not a scientist, preacher, dog whisperer, economist, doctor, or astronaut. I'm a writer, for better or worse, no matter how good or bad it may be. And just like how Rocky is a fighter and he "needs to be around it", I can't abandon things just because I get bored or uninterested.

I don't really have a satisfactory conclusion to this piece other than I am fucking ready to journey into what is now the downward spiral part of Stallone's career. From here on out, it's going to be the cheeseball action flicks, unnecessary sequels, and ill-advised comedies that have come to define our perception of Stallone. At the end of this odyssey, I will probably be just as beat up as Rocky is at the end of the climactic fight with Apollo Creed, but I will be calling out to you all, "YOOOO!! I DID IT!"

And then I will wrestle Hulk Hogan.

Project Stallone: "Paradise Alley"

Paradise Alley
By Peter John Gardner

Oh, the unforseen pleasures that awaited me in this film!

I knew I was in for a treat from the opening credits. "Paradise Alley" opens up with Cosmo (Stallone) and his two brothers, Victor and Lenny, having a race for cash across some rooftops in 1940's Brooklyn. As they are runing, the audience is treated to a freezeframe whenever a new credit appears on the screen. Stallone directed this film, and I assume he had some kind of say during the editing of this film, so I'm baffled as to why he chose some of the frames to freeze that he did. Most are unflattering stills of Stallone with a "YEEEEEEARGH!!!" expression on his face.

Ok, so I'm watching the opening credits, and I notice that the opening theme is bad. Not typical 70s B-movie bad...more like, "Is this a joke?" bad. At first the song sounded like something Trey Parker would sing in an episode of South Park, and then I thought it might have been a better-left-buried Tom Waits tune (more on him later). It turns out that the song is sung by none other than Sylvester Stallone himself. My new mission in life is to track down a copy of the soundtrack, whether it be on vinyl or mp3. This song is so gloriously bad that it must be celebrated.

The movie itself is sort of what would happen if "Rocky" and "Over the Top" mated. Cosmo, Lenny, and Victor are three Italian-American brothers living in Hell's Kitchen during the 1940s. After displaying raw strength and brute in local arm wrestling matches, Victor is egged on by his two brothers to enter the world of professional wrestling. Stallone's Cosmo is a fast talking, con artist type, and Stallone really doesn't fit in a part like this. His semi-retarded sounding diction doesn't fit into the used car salesman-like personality that Cosmo's character needed (this is a role that should've gone to whomever the Steve Buscemi of the era was). Stallone starts booking Victor in local wrestling matches with dreams that Vic will earn enough money for the brothers to move out of Hell's Kitchen. Cosmo in particular wants to live on a houseboat off the coast of New Jersey (huh?) with his new girlfriend.

And, yes, we do get yet another awkward Stallone wooing a girl scene. And it's the same as in his previous movies. If I didn't know any better, I would start to think that Sly wanted to make this some kind of trademark of his.

As the film progresses, the seemingly passive and quiet Lenny, played by Armand Assante, begins to dominate the proceedings when Cosmo expresses concern that they are exploiting Victor. Lenny becomes this aggressive bastard that just wants to use Victor to win him money, no matter how badly Victor gets hurt.

Upping the surrealness of this movie is the presence of Tom Waits in a small role as a local piano player aptly named "Mumbles". Seeing the great Tom Waits interact with Sylvester Stallone was something that I never thought I'd see, and it makes me wonder why the two never formed a friendship during the making of this film. Imagine how awesome "Rocky V" or "Demolition Man" would have been had Tom Waits done the soundtrack. Hell, maybe Stallone will read this and decide to have Tom Waits in Rambo IV. One can only hope.

To sum it up, the story is basically about how money and power can tear even the closest of brothers apart. Friends and family are a person's backbone, but as Lenny shows in the film, sometimes your friends and family have their moments of narrowmindedness. No matter how high of a regard one may hold your friends and family, they are still human. They will fuck up. They will piss you off more often than you'd like throughout life. What's important to love people despite their differences. The longer you know someone, the more apparent their flaws become, and it's a test to see if one can forgive another despite their flaws and love them anyway. My family has pissed me off many times. My closest friends are not perfect people by any means. Should I love them any less? Should I only surround myself with different company that are more in line with how I think?

The answer is no. My friends and family aren't perfect, and I love them all the more for it. These are the people that even though they might finish off the bottle of orange juice I was saving or make an occasional white lie that I can see through, would still be there for me no matter what. It's foolish to hold grudges against your friends and family over mundane things that can be resolved with a simple talk.

I love my friends. Stallone's "Paradise Alley" has driven me to write a thank you letter of sorts to you. I know that I'm not the greatest person in the world. I can be quiet and boring. I'm forgetful and at times oblivious to other's feelings. What I like about my friends is that you're still there for me, despite myself. I love you all for it, and I'll always be there for you.

Stallone has made me all mushy, warm, and fuzzy. That's a sentence that I'd never thought I'd write in this lifetime.

Project Stallone: "F.I.S.T."

F.I.S.T.
By Peter John Gardner

When I saw this title as the next movie on my Stallone queue, I was excited beyond all belief. At first, I thought that this was going to be Stallone's second foray into the world of pornography that somehow slipped under my radar. I thought it might've had a boxer theme to it in which Stallone punches rectums of different varieties until they're loose enough for his FIST.

Wrong.

Then I thought it could've been Stallone's first entry into the action genre. A name like "F.I.S.T." immediately conjures up repressed memories of a cheeseball martial arts movie that Jean Claude Van Damme would do.

Turns out that F.I.S.T. is an acronym for "Federation of Inter State Truckers", and what I got was a two and a half hour movie about union workers. Fresh off the success of Rocky, Stallone co-wrote another screenplay that tells the tale of Johnny Kovak. Johnny is a factory worker in 1930s Cleveland who becomes frustrated with his working conditions, wage, and unfair treatment. To make a really long fucking story short, Kovak rallies his fellow blue collar heroes together to form an organized labor union. Over the course of the film, Kovak's character gains more public recognition for his efforts, he also becomes entangled with the Cleveland mob after staging an unsuccessful strike. As we all know, getting involved with the mafia is a bad idea. As Stallone moves up the ladder, investigations ensue pertaining to F.I.S.T.'s alleged ties to the mob. "F.I.S.T." is basically a fictionalized version of the story of Jimmy Hoffa.

Interwoven throughout the movie is yet another awkward romance in a Stallone movie. As seen in his previous movies, Stallone's method of wooing a girl is to just follow her around and babble about random shit.

"Hey. Yo. You like birds? Hey, yo, I like birds too. Yo, I once had a bird named Larry, ya know? Hey, yo but he kept biting me, so I had to get rid of him, ya know? Hey, yo, you like going to the movies? Yo, slow down! Why you walkin' so fast, huh?"

I'm not going to use this film to bitch about my job or any past jobs that I've had. It would be too easy for me to compare the hyprocrisies of Kovac's company to my own, and that's not really what I got out of this movie anyway. What I asked myself after watching this cinematic version of some student's term paper for a political science course was how much I would be willing to "sell out" in order to set right what I think is wrong.

It's easy for someone to sit comfortably outside the system holding their picket signs at a university and protest to students that simply want to get to the library soon so that they can study for that calculus test that they've been worrying all week for. Doing so just results in unwinnable arguments with people that are either set in their beliefs or simply have other things in their life that they are more concerned about.

I've always felt that if you really want change, you have to be willing to compromise. You want to take down "the man"? Do it from the inside. When you get there, you'll realize that you have to start from rock bottom, just like Johnny Kovak did, to get to a position where you can change a company's policies to fit your own set of ideals. What you'll also find is that you'll have to do a lot of compromising. Not everyone holds the same beliefs and politics as you do and shoving them down someone else's throat is akin to doing the same with religious beliefs.

Standing around outside the system and bitching about things won't get you anywhere. If you want change, you have to be willing to agree to disagree. I also think that the best way to institute a change in your system is to do it from the inside.

Penetrate the system's butthole with your F.I.S.T.

Project Stallone: "Rocky"

Rocky
By Peter John Gardner

I've been sitting on this one for a while, and my excuse this time isn't the usual "movie seemed boring". I've seen Rocky dozens upon dozens of times since I was a kid, seen all the sequals, and own the dvd. It's the one movie of Stallone's that I refer people to when they say that Stallone only makes shitty movies. The first installment in what never should have been a franchise is actually a damn good film. It takes its characters seriously and doesn't have the campy feel that later Rocky movies drown themselves in. Critics ate this movie up when it was released in 1976. It was nominated for ten (!) Academy awards and won three of them, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stallone himself was nominated for Best Actor (!!) and Best Screenplay (?!).

Yes, this movie was Stallone's baby, and it proves that when you look past his later shitfests like Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and The Specialist, there is actually some talent deep within ol' Sly.

So why did I wait so long to write about this? Well, I really wanted to take a fresh angle on the film. I revisited the film for the project and wanted to forgo the obvious underdog parallels between my life and Rocky's. I tinkered around with a piece about blind confidence. I wrote a whole draft examining the dichotomy of Rocky and Paulie's friendship (I still might post that someday). I also tried to compare the awkward romance between Rocky and Adrian to my own experiences with love. None of these angles seemed to be working.

In the end, I can't avoid the unavoidable. The underdog parallel is staring me right in the face, and it's too strong to ignore. A story such as this is the reason why I undertook this project.

Everyone has seen at least one of the Rocky movies at some point in their life, and they all pretty much follow the same formula, so I'll spare you a long plot synopsis. In a nutshell, Rocky is a small time boxer in Philadelphia. He fights for nearly no money, works as a thug for a local loan shark for extra cash, and doesn't even have his own locker at the local gym. Heavyweight champion Apollo Creed decides to give a no name fighter a chance at the title for publicity's sake. Enter Rocky Balboa. So, Rocky is lured into this fight despite himself (he doesn't really think he can beat Apollo and the fight would only serve to humiliate him). All the while, a burdgeoning romance is occuring between Rocko and a timid pet store clerk named Adrian.

Although the film never really explains how Adrian went from being creeped out by this big, dumb brute that always came into her store and told really bad jokes to being not only his biggest fan but the love of his life as well. With a movie like this, you don't really care about that. Stallone's acting makes Rocky such a damn likeable character. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is the quintessential do-gooder with a heart of gold. Just watch the scenes where Rocky talks with his pet turtles. You just want to give the oaf a hug.

Time to tie this together.

I'm not a superb writer. I'm not even a great writer. I'm ok, at best. Slightly above average, maybe. That's kinda how Rocky feels about himself. He knows he can beat the living shit out of the local fighters, but when presented with an opportunity at the big time, he takes it, but with huge dose of uncertainty.

I too am an underdog, not just when it comes to writing, but in most aspects of my life. Like Rocky, I'm not exactly smart, and I tell really bad jokes. Sometimes I squander or just plain fuck up opportunities for change or growth in my life due to my own insecurities. Example: grad school. I've had my bachelor's for nearly a year now, and I always planned on going to grad school after a short break. Take some time off from school, work, save up some money, get rid of student loan debt, etc. But as each day passes, I grow less confident about returning to school. I look at others that shared my major in college and see the progress that they've made, and I become simultaneously proud and jealous. I look at the results from the two times that I took the GRE and kick myself for the pathetic scores that I made.

Am I really cut out for this? Do I have what it takes to make it into a decent graduate program and achieve my goal, which is to become a teacher and somewhat successful writer? Fuck no. But after watching a movie like Rocky, where an underdog overcomes seemingly impossible odds, I feel like maybe I do stand a chance out there. Who says I couldn't be a great teacher...one of those "that dude changed my life" teachers? Who says that I couldn't write something on par with the Apollo Creed of the literary world?

Don't answer that.

I'll never stop trying, though.

Project Stallone: "Death Race 2000"

Death Race 2000
By Peter John Gardner

There is a certain hypocrisy that exists between motorists and pedestrians that I've never quite fully understood. Let me preface this by saying that I do it too, so I'm not passing judgment on anyone; just stating the obvious.

When you're walking through a parking lot, you expect all traffic to stop around you as you make your way into Payless Shoe Source or Food Lion. If a car cuts you off as you're walking, you think to yourself something along the lines of, "Douche bag. Pedestrians have the right of way". It's true. It's the law.

Now, let's imagine ourselves on the flip side of this coin. You're in your car, you've got to be at work in 15 minutes, and you just need to run into the post office real quick to mail off your utility bill because it's late, and you can't pay it online because your internet is down. You're in a hurry, but you're going the 10 mph speed limit in the shopping plaza. All of a sudden, some meathead in a football jersey with the sleeves cut off and his Twinkie filled girlfriend walk right in your path. They walk really slow, or so it seems; all while you scream your favorite expletives in your car for them to hurry it up. While they do have the right of way, you have become pissed right the fuck off and immediately forget any time that you've been a pedestrian. Again, you're in a hurry, so you start thinking wild thoughts. Perhaps, even for just a split second, you wish that you could just run right over them without consequence (or maybe you've never thought that. Just pretend that you have, for the sake of my point).

In real life, you'd go to jail.

In the world of DEATH RACE 2000, you'd score 10 points, plus an extra 40 depending on whether or not the two are teenagers.

"Death Race 2000" takes place in the year 2000, a year in which 70s filmmakers thought that America would be running the world like it owns the place and is ruled by an evil dictator that focuses more on distractions than the real issues at hand. Silly writers can never get the future right.

Anyway, every country in the world has become America, and the country's main pastime is it's annual "Death Race". Participants from all over the globe engage in a cross country grand prix where they compete for the highest score by hitting the most bystanders.

Have you ever heard yourself or someone you know mention "10 points!" for potentially hitting some person that it's in your way? The point system comes from this movie, and it goes something like this:
Women: 10 points
Teenagers: 40 points
Race officials: 50 points
Children under 12: 70 points
Senior citizens: 100 points (Local hospitals have "Euthanasia Day" during the race in which the wheelchair bound elderly are lined up in the road, smiling and patiently awaiting their death by turbo car)

Each driver has a car outfitted with weapons of destruction that are never really used. Presumably due to budget restraints, the cars have swords and machine guns attached to them that look about as realistic as that "fort" you made out of cardboard boxes when you were a kid.

The movie does feature a colorful cast of characters for the racers with names like Calamity Jane, Matilda the Hun, and Nero the Hero. Out of all the drivers in the movie, you'll recognize two. First off, there is the reigning champion, "Frankenstein", as portrayed by David Carradine who is known to some as Kane from "Kung Fu" and known to others as Bill from "Kill Bill". Supposedly, Frankenstein has been genetically built by the government to be the best death racer around, and his body is comprised of the best bits from other racers.

The other recognizable face is our very own piece of steroid enhanced Genoa salami, Sly Stallone portraying the overtly aggressive "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo. Machine Gun Joe is supposed to be the movie's villain, but an adequate conflict between Stallone and Frankenstein is never fully fleshed out. Instead, we just have random scenes of Stallone firing a tommy gun into a crowd of racing fans and unchecked aggression towards his partner.

There really isn't much more to this movie other than the racing carnage. Frankenstein gets a small character arc in the form of a "love interest", and we get another awkward sex scene (I'm beginning to find that these seem to happen frequently in Stallone movies). Does this mean the movie is bad? Well, yeah, but it's one of those so bad it's good type of bad movies. It's fun and campy in the 60s version of Batman kind of way, and it's downright hilarious to watch with a big group of friends. This movie is cheesy, but it's a good cheese. A flavorful cheese.

In this film, Stallone's character is a one-dimensional thug. He never shows any empathy towards any of the other characters, and he regularly shows signs of unregulated aggression (the aforementioned scene with him shooting up the crowd springs to mind). In the end, Machine Gun Joe meets his doom by way of his own aggressiveness and ego.

Don't let this be your downfall. When someone heckles you from a crowd, don't shoot them with a tommy gun. Smile and continue singing along to Prince's "Diamonds and Pearls" that just came on the radio. If you're sitting at a stop sign and getting frustrated that no one will stop and let you pull out in front of them, don't worry about it. Instead, think about how you can make one of your friends smile and then do it. You see, Machine Gun Joe focuses to much on minor annoyances in life, and by not having a positive outlet, he eventually reaches a boiling point to where he just becomes mad at the world in general. We can learn something from Machine Gun Joe here, and that is to not let life's minor grievances get to you. Here, Stallone is a poster boy for anger management.

Next time you feel any hint of road rage, just think to yourself, "What would Stallone do?"....then do the opposite.

Project Stallone: "The Lords of Flatbush"

The Lords of Flatbush
By Peter John Gardner

One has to wonder where the smorgasbord of 1950s nostalgia was coming from during the 1970s. In the seventies, there seemed to be a demographic of people that wanted to return to the decade of greasers, poodle skirts, and the Big Bopper. The entertainment industry got American Graffiti, Happy Days, and Grease. Maybe because 'flower power' didn't work, many people wanted to escape the burgeoning cynicism of the Nixon era and return to a simpler time when "soda jerk" was a commonly used term in middle America. Who the fuck knows. Whatever the cause, in 1974 the world received another bit of nostalgia in the form of this low budget, steaming pile of poodle shit known as "The Lords of Flatbush".

I was actually kind of pumped going into this film. Obviously, there's the Stallone factor, but the film also features a pre-Fonzie Henry Winkler portraying one of the Lords. Fonzie and Stallone as greasers in Brooklyn? Ooh, baby. How could this not be a recipe for greatness?

"The Lords of Flatbush" are four highschool wiseguys in 1950s Brooklyn, NY. These are the type of meatheads that are too 'tough' to display any kind of maturity or sensitivity. We know this because the film spends 30 minutes of its 90 minute running time establishing this. Ok, we get it. They're supposed to badasses. Let's move on.

A plot, and I use the term loosely here, begins to emerge when Stallone's character, Stanley, gets his girlfriend knocked up after a night of was-it-or-was-it-not consensual sex on the beach.

And this is the only thread in the movie that follows through. The other Lords: Chico, Butchey (the Fonz!), and Wimpy each get their own stories. Chico wants to bone his cocktease girlfriend, but she won't give in until he grows up, Fonzie is apparently quite intelligent (the film never shows us this. This is told to us in dialogue by a cook at the local diner) but is wasting his life away hanging around with these thugs. Wimpy? Wimpy likes to shoot pool.

And that's it. Stanley's plot is the only one that follows through to something that resembles a resolution. If you really want to know, Stanley acts tough on the outside, but the film decides to let the audience know that he DOES have a sensitive side in the last ten minutes of the movie when he finally buys a ring for his girlfriend. The film concludes with a Jewish themed wedding between the two and another scene of Stallone dancing around in a circle, though fully clothed this time.

The other plot threads go absolutely nowhere. Instead, "The Lords of Flatbush" is padded out with many scenes that were probably intended to show character development, but since the filmmakers didn't seem to have a script or a plot before going into production, we get a bunch of scenes of obvious improvised dialogue and scenes that last up to ten minutes that go nowhere and leave you thinking, "Why the hell was that scene in there?".

Stanley's revelation that he must take responsibility in his life comes so sudden and late into the film that it's not believable at all, but I'm going to jump from there anyway. I've been wandering around this place for twenty some odd years now, and I still feel like I haven't quite grown up yet. I may be a grown ass man on the outside, but I still have the mind and sense of humor of a 16 year old. Whereas the filmmakers seem to be stuck in two decades previous to their time, I'm still stuck with a mindset that counteracts my age.

Every one of us has had a conversation about having kids someday, and my usual stance is, "I don't want to be a dad because I know that I'm not mature enough to be a good one". But, would that be the case? Nowadays, I really don't know. I'm trying to grow up; I really am. I dress nicer than I did before, I desire a clean and classy home, I've got a purdy Bachelor's degree hanging on my wall, and I am able to lead others. I think if I found out that a Peter Jr. was on the way, it'd probably be the final catalyst for a transformation into "Grown Ass Man Peter".

There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, and there certainly isn't anything wrong with having the sense of humor that still finds dick and fart jokes amusing, but there comes a time when we must start acting less like our shoe size and more like our age...at least on the outside.

I think that's what "The Lords of Flatbush" was trying to tell me. Then again, maybe it was trying to tell me to be more like The Fonz. That would be just as productive, in my opinion.

Project Stallone: "Lovers and Other Strangers"

Lovers and Other Strangers
By Peter John Gardner

"Don't look for happiness. It'll only make you miserable."

Best advice I ever heard.

Lovers and Other Strangers was based on a play that was making its rounds across the New York City theatre circuit at the time. The plot is centered around a young couple, Mike and Susan, and their doubts regarding their upcoming matrimonial union. Intercut throughout the film are several subplots involving characters related to the couple.

First, we've got Susan's parents, a couple that is seemingly happy on the surface, but Susan's dad is having quite the steamy affair behind his old lady's back. Bad karma, Mr. Susan's Dad.

Then we've got Susan's sister who is stuck in a sexless marriage with a husband that is more interested in watching Ingrid Bergman films than forking his wife.

Next up, we've got Mike's brother Richie who is already in an unhappy marriage and desperately wants out.

Not to be outdone, there is another subplot invoving one of the bridesmaids, Brenda, and an usher, Jerry. These two are set up on a blind date, and viewers get to watch Brenda cocktease Jerry for the entire film.

Towering above all else are Mike and Ritchie's Italian/American parents. These two are stuck in an unhappy marriage, yet they stay together because "that's what you're supposed to do". (Fun fact: Mike's mom is played by Bea Arthur, better known as Dorothy from the Golden Girls. First, this marks the second time I've seen a Golden Girl in a Stallone film. Second, was this woman ever young? The movie was made in 1970, and she looks older than she did on the Golden Girls).

If anyone's been a serious relationship, married or not, then it should be easy to relate to at least one of the characters and their subplot. Ever been in a relationship where your partner became uninterested in you sexually? Ever been in one where you find out your partner has been cheating on you? How about a relationship that you stayed in merely for the convenience instead of an actual passion?

What did I get from all of this? Some nuggets of wisdom, actually. The quote that opened the review is a line uttered by Mike's dad when Mike is expressing his doubts about getting married because he just wants to be happy. Taken out of context, the quote is pure brilliance. How many of us have strived for happiness only to find out that we're just making ourselves more miserable in the process? You can't force happiness upon yourself.

"You can't help who you love and who you don't love". This is a quote from Susan's dad when trying to justify his affair, but it's one that I think is applicable to everyone. Sometimes you have a family member or a close friend that has overwhelming flaws in their character. Would you ever stop loving them because of their faults? If you do, then you should probably re-evaluate what you think "love" is.

Oh, and Stallone. Um...according to imdb.com, he was an extra in this film, and try as I might, I couldn't find him. I checked every crowd scene for John Rambo walking around in the background. There is a dance sequence at the wedding where everyone is dancing those weird late 60s/early 70s spastic dances. I wanted to see Stallone do that. Hell, I wanted to see Stallone do his naked dance from "The Party at Kitty and Stud's" in the background of the wedding.

On the other hand, you do get to see one of the Golden Girls do the cha-cha. I found that amusing.

Instead, Stallone blends in seamlessly. You don't see him. Stallone is just a faceless extra in someone else's movie; a feeling that I have on a daily basis. Interesting stuff happens all around me...to other people. I'm the guy in the background. I'm the guy that was there at the party, but you didn't see him. I'm the guy that you pass by on the street and think nothing of. I blend in, but I'm not happy about it. Nothing about me sticks out to the average person.

Will my Stallonical odyssey help me overcome these insecurities? Maybe the answer lies in Death Race 2000...God help us all.