Enjoy Stuff: Unboxing Boxing Day
Now that Christmas is over, it's time to engage in Boxing Day! This week we look at what makes boxing movies so popular and inspirational. Jay and Shua come out swinging as we Enjoy Stuff!
From Rocky to Creed, boxing movies are popular, motivational, and award-winning. We look at some of our most memorable pugilistic stories and try to figure out why people like them.
News
Bryce Dallas Howard will be heading up a reboot of Disney’s classic alien mystery Witch Mountain
Hey, look at that! They renewed Quantum Leap for season 2!
And the Disney+ series The Santa Clauses has been renewed for more holiday goodness next year.
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What we’re Enjoying
The holidays are over, but they delivered a new Christmas tradition for Shua. The Apple TV movie Spirited with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds was an impressive, Broadway-style musical. He was very impressed with the story, songs, and performances of the cast. Jay sat down for a rewatch of the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building with his wife. Like the TechnoRetro Dads, she was intrigued by the entertaining and hilarious show.
Sci-Fi Saturdays/MCU Location Scout
For the end of 2022, Jay wrapped up Sci-Fi Saturdays with Dark City (1998). A wild psychological trip of a vision of the future. Tune in this Saturday for a reboot of Lost in Space (1998) with Gary Oldman, William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc, and Mimi Rogers.
Enjoy Movies!
December 26 is Boxing Day in many parts of the world. Though it started out as a way for rich people to pretend like they cared about their servants, it soon evolved into….well, another excuse to lure shoppers into stores with sales galore. While it never really evolved into anything significant in the United States, it gave us the perfect excuse to Enjoy some boxing movies.
Probably the first thing you think of when someone stops you on the street and says, “Hey buddy, what movie do you think of when I say boxing?” is “Get away from me you freak! Why are you asking random strangers about boxing movies?!?!” But then you’re going to think of Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 movie Rocky.
It was an inspirational tale of an underdog boxer in Philadelphia who got a once in a lifetime chance to prove himself. And that’s what boxing movies do for us. They help us understand that hard work and perseverance can change your life, even if you don’t get the knockout. Rocky inspired a series of sequels, many of which are just as iconic or more! Whether he’s fighting Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago, we can cheer for this guy who we’ve come to know through good storytelling.
Learning about characters is really the key to a good boxing movie. Winning the boxing match isn’t the real goal for our hero, it’s overcoming the hardships of their lives. The Champ (1979) starred Jon Voight as a boxer who was trying to keep his young son, played by Ricky Schroder.
Robert DeNiro’s Raging Bull (1980) told the real life story of Jake LaMotta whose violence and temper made him a good fighter, but destroyed his life out of the ring.
Sometimes the story could be fun. In 1979, Tim Conway starred with Don Knotts as a fighter who gets roped in by the mob to participate in a series of fixed fights. And The Main Event (1979) with Ryan O’Neal and Barbara Streisand was a romantic comedy about a boxer and a woman who tries to get him back into the ring. It was promoted as “A Glove Story”.
The list goes on and on. Boxing movies don’t show any signs of going away and they even often earn high praises and awards in Hollywood.
Are you inspired by boxing movies? Do you drink a lot of eggs first thing in the morning? First person that emails me with the subject line, “Yo Adrian!” will get a special mention on the show. Let us know. Come talk to us in the Discord channel or send us an email to EnjoyStuff@RetroZap.com
