Word: alleys
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...should try to make a film so full of cloying sentimentality and embarrassing cliches, a film so poorly directed and so burdened with heavyhanded yet uninspired performances that people must turn to their television sets for intelligent entertainment, you'd probably come up with Paradise Alley...
Sylvester Stallone has become Hollywood's self-appointed poet of the simple-minded. He speaks Brooklynese, and diamonds of wisdom in the form of dese, dems and dats stream out of Cosmo, Stallone's character in Paradise Alley ("Nature's a funny thing"). Directed and written by Stallone (he even bellows the theme song), Paradise Alley invites comparisons with Rocky...
Only Stallone's mother will forgive him for Paradise Alley. The movie has all the flaws of Rocky--the truisms, the sentimentality that could make a soap-opera addict squirm--and none of its strengths. The innocence has been replaced by a blatant attempt to cash in on Rocky's success. Rocky has gone Hollywood...
...huge set pieces come off a bit better, especially so in the case of a tumultuous fight scene that parallels the climax of Rocky. But it is really around its fringes that Paradise Alley becomes interesting. Kevin Conway, as a James Cagney-inspired hood, brings savage, roughhouse wit to some incidental barroom scenes. In the expendable role of a has-been black wrestler, Frank McRae is a knockout. Though playing a slow-witted loser without money or friends, this actor retains a delicate sense of dignity. His two brief scenes carry more emotional weight than all the rest of Paradise...
...film, the star is at his worst when he lays on calculated doses of sentiment and sensitivity; at such times, Stallone seems more in touch with imagined demands of the box office than his own instincts. True, his sloppy side eventually buries the movie, but deep within Paradise Alley you can hear an original comic voice struggling to burst out. - Frank Rich