Directed by Derek Wayne Johnson
Running Time: 1 Hour and 13 Minutes

By Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

Frank Stallone is an extremely uncomplicated man. Stallone: Frank, That Is shows that doesn't mean he isn't also extremely interesting.

Frank is Sylvester's brother, which is how he's been introduced in everything he's been part of since his singing cameo in the first Rocky. This is, understandably, frustrating. He's had decades-long careers in film and music, but he's related to one of the biggest, most distinct movie stars out there, so everything he touches, including this documentary, has to acknowledge Sly (in a great, subtle joke, Sylvester's chyron credits him as "Frank's brother/ Academy Award Nominee"). As an old bandmate notes, he isn't even always "Sylvester's brother," sometimes he's "Rocky's brother"-- "the brother of a fictional character."
The band Frank and the interviewee were in? They changed their name from The American Tragedy to Valentine early on, purely because Frank had a really nice belt that said "Valentine" and he didn't want to explain the disconnect between the belt's embroidery and the band's billing. One hometown gig in Philly paid them in fish. John Oates and Richie Sambora played in a pre-Rocky Valentine.

Stallone is full of wild anecdotes like that. Frank is a charismatic guy, and every story he tells has at least a few detours into slapstick punchlines and surreal Zelig moments. You hear about how excited Frank was about the British Invasion bands he grew up idolizing, and along the way he tells you about how he burned his scalp ironing his hair straight for a local gig. Later, he records an album that happens to have been produced by Harry Nilsson and arranged by Van Dyke Parks, and Nilsson's friend John Lennon gets murdered on their first day in the studio.

The film would be as watchable as the best Behind the Music episodes if Frank had the unwarranted arrogance of a Hollywood lifer, but he's completely self-aware and self-deprecating. He knows he landed movies like The Pink Chiquitas and Terror in Beverly Hills "because they couldn't afford [his] brother," and he openly calls most of his film roles "garbage." He says he can't get a booking agent for his big band concerts, but he quickly follows that up with "Nobody owes me a living." He's just happy to be here, and he'd be happier with Barfly if it ended up being the launch pad to bigger films he hoped it would be, but he's still proud of the work.

I'll say this right now, though-- I'd rather watch Frank's Hudson Hawk than Sly's Rocky any day of the week. Rocky is a better movie, but Hudson Hawk is a bizarre misfire that gets some legitimately great jokes off and couldn't have been made six months before or after it hit. I love Rambo, but I prefer Demolition Man, Cobra, and Tango & Cash. If you like the alternate-reality action canon of straight-to-VHS movies whose only marketing was the tape cover at the video store, you'll like listening to Frank's stories about them.
People just don't have Frank Stallone's life. He started his twenties in a condemned apartment next to his brother's, that they combined by caving in a wall with a shovel, he's currently on the big band circuit and somewhere in between he put his blood, sweat and tears into the Staying Alive soundtrack after The Bee Gees walked. He got knocked out on-screen twice in Rocky III and he got his fingers blown off after walking into a gun store on a lark. And now he's just a warm older guy who wants to tell you what that was like, with a "Yeah, I guess that was pretty crazy" sense of bemusement.

Stallone only cheaps out once, toward the end, when a bunch of the talking heads tell you that Frank says what he means, and that he means what he says. A friend with an elaborate Van Dyke points at the camera and says "He don't take no bullshit from nobody and he'll tell you exactly what's on his mind and that's what I love about him." The movie hits the brakes enough here to imply that he's said some shit he may not be proud of but doesn't tell you what that is; a quick Google search let me know he's a big Trump supporter and that he called one of the Parkland teens a "pussy" and said somebody should "sucker punch that rich little bitch."

So I disagree with Frank Stallone's politics as much as I disagree with anybody's, but I've watched movies about worse people. I've been excited to hear weird stories from absolute monsters and I'm not going to judge a documentary because its subject has backward takes on the world. I have to judge it for thinking it addresses those things without actually addressing them, though. If you're going to say "This guy doesn't take shit and he tells it like it is!" half a dozen times, you can't not let him tell you what he thinks.

I don't need Stallone to confront the dumber parts of a boxer/singer/actor's life, but it's just clumsy to frame him as a truth-teller without telling any of his "truths." Still, Stallone is a super fun biography of the rare kind of guy who can get his fingers shot off and not have that moment rank in a list of the ten weirdest things that happened to him.

Stallone: Frank, That Is available for digital rental tomorrow.