Cinemazlowski 'Creed' provides all the triumph of a classic 'Rocky' film

There's something about Thanksgiving dinner's familiarity that adds to the magic of its enjoyment. You know exactly what you're getting – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, some sort of greens and cranberries – but yet it's pretty much the most popular meal of the year.

 

The new film "Creed" is  the cinematic equivalent of turkey and all the trimmings. In it, co-writer/director Ryan Coogler and his writing partner Aaron Covington find a new way to return one of the most beloved characters in cinema history – Rocky Balboa – to the big screen. The resulting movie is packed with moments and twists that recall the prior films depicting the lovable boxer's life, and yet it somehow works so well that by the film's final fight climax, the audience of critics burst into whoops and anticipatory applause.

 

Don't believe me? Check out Rottentomatoes.com, where it currently shows that a whopping 95 percent of the nation's critics have given the movie thumbs up, an even higher rating than the transgender-themed Oscar-bait movie "The Danish Girl."  It's clear that no matter how many times the Rocky movie series seems to go down for the count, he is one character who is always welcome to come back for another round.

 

The new movie actually focuses on the character of Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan in a performance that should catapult him to Denzel Washington-level stardom), the son of Rocky's greatest boxing rival ever, Apollo Creed from the first two "Rocky" films. Adonis is first shown as a boy in 1998, being pulled out of the juvenile justice and foster care systems by Apollo's long-widowed wife, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad).

 

Adonis had always thought he was abandoned by his father and orphaned as a young child by his mother's passing, and never realized that he was the biological son of the world-champion boxer and a mistress. But despite his being adopted and raised by Mary Anne, who wants him to just take a smart and peaceful white-collar job, he's long had the instincts of a fighter and can't get that rage out of his system just because he's taken out of a thuggish environment.

 

Having secretly built a 15-0 record fighting across the border in Tijuana, Adonis decides that the corporate world isn't for him and quits his plum job. Despite disappointing his adoptive mom, he packs his possessions and moves across the country to Apollo's old stomping grounds in Philadelphia, convincing Rocky to come out of boxing-related retirement and train him to take on the world champion, a British fighter named Conlon.

 

Add in a burgeoning romance with a poor yet rising R&B singer named Bianca (Tessa Thompson), and the formula is complete. Adonis' love for the young performer parallels Rocky's sweet courtship of his beloved wife Adrian in the first "Rocky," while Rocky himself steps into the role of trainer in a way that would make his own former trainer Mickey proud.

 

And as Rocky teaches Adonis to man up and face his demons en route to his battle royale, he himself has to be encouraged to face one final battle: the kind of cancer that killed Adrian years before is now coursing through his own body. Sure, the illness is just as much Oscar bait as Eddie Redmayne transforming into a woman in "The Danish Girl," but there is a serious groundswell of support around Stallone's very fine work in this movie that could see him grabbing a Best Supporting Actor award at next year's Oscars.

 

That would be a well-deserved reward for the efforts of Coogler, who managed to make "Creed" as a reward for his prior success with Jordan, the 2013 modern classic "Fruitvale Station." The original "Rocky" movie from 1976 was the film that inspired Coogler to pursue a filmmaking career, and he had written "Creed" many years ago as a dream project he wanted to get down on paper but never dreamed would get made since Stallone had written every other film in the series himself.

 

But  when Hollywood asked him what he wanted to do next after "Fruitvale," Coogler dug up his script for "Creed" and asked his agent to send it to Stallone. The result was a miracle: Stallone was so impressed by the writing that he not only signed up, but championed the project to his old studio.

 

With "Creed" now coming out on the night before Thanksgiving, he owes plenty of gratitude to Stallone. And with a movie this richly entertaining, filmgoers of all ages have something to be thankful for as well.

In keeping with the rest of the "Rocky" movie series, "Creed" has a minimum of foul language, with one barely discernible F word, a couple of S words and a brief and discreetly shown sex scene between Adonis and Bianca that cuts away before getting graphic. If you can handle the torrent of punch-pounding ring action in the final match, "Creed" is nearly perfectly acceptable entertainment for all ages.