I Play Rocky Review: Stallone’s True Breakthrough Story Inspires Cheers

Fifty years ago, a modestly budgeted film about a down-on-his-luck Philadelphia boxer became one of Hollywood’s most improbable success stories. “Rocky” was written by and starred a then-unknown 30-year-old New Yorker named Sylvester Stallone.

United Artists had little confidence in the project at the time. The studio allotted “Rocky” just $1 million and did not even give it the splashy red-carpet premiere usually reserved for major releases.

Half a century later, Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky” has arrived carrying a similarly underestimated aura. The “Green Book” director chronicles Stallone’s Balboa-like struggle to make his passion project — and to play its lead role himself.

Its 27-year-old star, Long Island native Anthony Ippolito, has only a handful of credits, inviting the same question once asked of Stallone: Who is this guy? After the trailer drew mixed reactions in July, “I Play Rocky” appeared headed for the kind of respectfully conventional Hollywood backstory seen in “Hitchcock,” starring Anthony Hopkins. Instead, the film received an enthusiastic world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday night.

And it is far better than that: stirring, funny, inspiring and remarkably easy to embrace. At a time when biopics often revisit stories whose every turn is already familiar, this one offers genuine surprises. More importantly, it avoids the reverential, museum-piece approach, embracing the scrappy, unconventional determination that made “Rocky” endure.

This is not another lazy exercise in conveyor-belt nostalgia, relying on old songs and recognizable faces for easy affection. It makes viewers actively root for Sly.

Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” does not arrive until more than an hour into “I Play Rocky,” yet the film generates the same chills throughout, as though the iconic theme were playing on a constant loop.

When producers Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) and Bob Chartoff (Toby Kebbell) finally agree to let Stallone star in the film he wrote from the heart in just 3½ days, the moment lands with the force of Rocky reaching the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps.

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The road there is anything but easy. Before accepting the meager $21,000 contract, Stallone is shown in New York City with barely $300 in the bank, working at a fish market and briefly appearing in softcore porn. Once he can no longer afford a $7.50-a-night fleabag motel, he sleeps on the street.

It’s in those early scenes that we first meet the excellent Ippolito. The initial encounter is reminiscent of seeing Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” At the start, you have to get used to a very distinctive voice, to say the least, coming out of another man’s mouth.

However, Ippolito’s performance, like Chalamet’s, is not a skit’s caricature. Never over the top, he captures a tenderhearted, well-read, hardworking dreamer who just so happens to have a gym rat’s body. And importantly Ippolito radiates a movie star’s energy.

Sly meets his future wife Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb, a chemistry class), and they move to LA so he can pursue acting. Screenwriting comes first, though, after he sneaks a script onto a “to read” pile at Winkler and Chartoff’s office. Impressed, the producers of Martin Scorsese’s movies ask him to go drum up something else. Something unique.

One night in 1975, while watching the Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner fight at a bar, Stallone is gripped by the Bayonne Bleeder’s spunk and against-all-odds determination. Not to mention the room’s emotional reaction to his doggedness. Thus, the idea for “Rocky” was born.

The middle of Farrelly’s movie has Stallone playing hardball to ensure he gets to also play Rocky. They want Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood. A big name. Tart-tongued Tracy Letts is so damn funny as Sandy Maddox, a fictional composite of studio execs, who cannot believe he has to deal with this crap.

When Winkler and Chartoff make Maddox watch “Lords of Flatbush,” a 1974 movie Stallone had a supporting role in, Letts bitterly snaps, “Yeah, let’s watch ‘Lords of F–kbush,’.”

Byrne and Kebbell make a tight and quick-witted showbiz comedy duo, like a pair out of a Kaufman and Hart play only with parental care.    

The final third of the movie is the unbelievably scrappy filming process of “Rocky.” They change the setting to Philly to save money because there are no unions to deal with there. Stallone has to painfully pound his bleeding fists into a frozen beef carcass. Director John Avildsen (Jay Duplass as a fun crank) uses the brand-new Steadicam, not to innovate but to save time. Carl Weathers (Stephan James) doesn’t know how to box!

And Ippolito finally takes the emotional gloves off as Sly films the fight scene with Mickey at his apartment door while channeling all the people in his life, like his dad, who never believed in him. I was KO’d.

“I Play Rocky” is a rare thing, a film that gets more enjoyable as it goes on — right till the end. There’s no sag. I never once got tired of it. Frankly, I wouldn’t have said “no thanks” to another fifteen minutes.

Which makes me think Farrelly’s kind of a Rocky Balboa himself. The director of the best picture winner “Green Book” seemed down for the count after the deserved failure of “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.”

But paired with a story as absorbing as Stallone’s and an actor as exciting as Ippolito, he’s back in fighting form with “I Play Rocky.”