Synopsis
Three Italian-American brothers, living in the slums of 1940's New York City, try to help each other with one's wrestling career using one brother's promotional skills and another brother's con-artist tactics to thwart a sleazy manager.
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Cast
- Sylvester StalloneCosmo Carboni
- Lee CanalitoVictor Carboni
- Armand AssanteLenny Carboni
- Frank McRaeBig Glory
- Anne ArcherAnnie
- Kevin ConwayStitch
- Terry FunkFrankie the Thumper
- Joyce IngallsBunchie
- Joe SpinellBurp
- Aimée EcclesSusan Chow
Recommendations
- 75
The A.V. Club
Striking in the way it evokes fears of abandonment—children’s worries blown up to grown-up scale—and completely unlike any film Stallone has put his name on since. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Stallone creates a thoroughly enjoyable character, constantly hustling and delivering a nonstop stream of chatter, showing the kind of engaging work he was capable of early in his career. - 70
Time Out
The plot (Stallone scheming himself and his two brothers uptown on the tails of ambitious gimmickry) is shot full of sentimental holes; but the creation of a floridly fantasticated netherworld of low-life high-rollers and their inevitably multi-coloured circumlocutions is irresistible. - 60
Variety
It’s an upbeat, funny, nostalgic film populated by colorful characters, memorable more for their individual moments than for their parts in the larger story. - 60
Newsweek
Paradise Alley lacks Rocky's primal simplicity: It's a parade of outrageous ploys that come pelting at you from all angles. [13 Nov 1978, p.106] - 50
Washington Post
Stallone hasn't done himself proud in Paradise Alley. The film could still use a director, a scenario writer and someone to discourage the star from lapsing into happy-go-lucky imitations of Lee J. Cobb. Still, there's something likeable about this zany manipulator. [10 Nov 1978, p.E1] - 50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The problem with Paradise Alley is that it has been made by the character Stallone was playing in Rocky: it has the cinematic mind of a 14-year-old in the glossy body of a major movie. [14 Nov 1978] - 40
The New York Times
A phony, attitudinizing, self-indulgent mess, a multimillion-dollar B (for boring) picture with the ear of a cauliflower, the heart of a hustler and the soul of a used-car salesman.
