PLOT: The true story of Sylvester Stallone and his struggle to be accepted as the star of Rocky, which he wrote but no studio wanted to make with him as the lead.
REVIEW: I must admit that I was wary of I Play Rocky. Sylvester Stallone is kind of the patron saint of JoBlo.com, and the idea of anyone playing him in a biopic is a tall order, as there’s only one Sly, and he’s very much still in the game. I also thought the story of Rocky had been told very effectively in Stallone’s Netflix doc, Sly, so why make it into a movie? I also didn’t love the early footage I saw at CinemaCon, which had me worried the big-screen Stallone would be a caricature.
I shouldn’t have worried, though, as I Play Rocky was a knockout. It’s easily director Peter Farrelly’s greatest film (which isn’t throwing shade at his classic comedies or Green Book, all of which I dug), with it being a loving homage to both Stallone and his most enduring creation, Rocky Balboa. We tend to forget just how big of a gamble Sly took when he stipulated that if Rocky was made at all, he would play the lead. It’s almost unfathomable now, as no one in their right mind would turn down the kind of money he was offered at a time when he was so broke he couldn’t even afford dog food.
What helps is that Anthony Ippolito is uncanny as Stallone. While I knew right away that he would capture Sly from a physical standpoint, I wondered if he’d be able to get the vibe or his intelligence, but he nails the part from the first frame. You forget you are watching a performance, with Ippolito even more impressive when Farrelly restages some of Rocky’s most iconic moments, which are recreated with exhaustive attention to detail.
It helps that Stallone’s story is a good one, with much of the focus being on his two most important relationships at the time, one being with his first wife, Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb), who comes off as a huge inspiration for Adrian, as well as his father, Frank Stallone Sr., with Farrelly casting his old There’s Something About Mary star Matt Dillon in the juicy role.
One wonders what Sly himself will make of the film, particularly his dealings with producers Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell), whose belief in Stallone is painted as perhaps the main reason the movie ever got made, as they took one of the biggest gambles in Hollywood history, with it paying off in a franchise that is still going strong fifty years later. Sly is certainly portrayed in a reverent way, with much to admire about his tenacity in getting the film made. The movie also does a good job depicting the seedy NYC of the seventies, even nodding at Sly’s very brief stint in softcore porn before he moved to L.A. His dog, Butkus, also gets a starring role, with a heartbreaking choice he had to make at the nadir of his career being one of the film’s most poignant scenes.
About half of the film is spent on Sly’s early days and the back-and-forth that led to Rocky, while the second half is dedicated to the making of it. Stephan James is shockingly good as Carl Weathers, right down to his impossibly sculpted six-pack and larger-than-life persona. Jay Duplass is also good as the caustic but talented director John G. Avildsen, while Tracy Letts gets some of the movie’s bigger laughs as the head of United Artists, even if he’s actually a composite character of several execs who worked on the movie and badly wanted Stallone replaced with Ryan O’Neal, which is hard to imagine now.
Fans of the Rocky franchise and of Stallone will be unable to find many faults with Farrelly’s film, which is as good a dramatization as one could hope for. The actors are so good one could almost imagine Sly watching this and opting to make Rocky 2.5 or 3.5 with Ippolito and James as his leads. But even folks who may not revere the films as much as we do at JoBlo will find much to love about this inspirational tale, which, at the end of the day, packs a strong message about having the courage to back up your convictions and bet on yourself, even when it seems crazy.
I Play Rocky opens in limited release on November 6th and goes wide on November 20th.
