Director: Peter Farrelly
Writer: Peter Gamble
Stars: Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, P.J. Byrne, Toby Kebbell
Synopsis: Sylvester Stallone, then a failing actor, writes the ultimate underdog story and must fight for his chance to play the role of a lifetime – Rocky Balboa.
It would be easy to criticize I Play Rocky for following the biographical “formula.” However, there’s an argument to be made that the formula exists for a reason, and when it’s done correctly, it can provide the most raucous, crowd-pleasing good time. And that’s exactly what I Play Rocky delivers, successfully recapturing the magic that made Rocky such an enduring classic to begin with while providing a fascinating look into the life of Sylvester Stallone during the making of the beloved movie.
Set in the 1970s, I Play Rocky begins by telling the amazing true story of how Sylvester Stallone (Anthony Ippolito) went from a failing actor and writer living on the breadline to an international household name with Rocky. The film details every hardship Stallone went through to finally make his dreams come true. The story starts with Stallone on the streets of New York with nowhere to call home and every audition he gets proving to be another dead end. The only person who seems to believe in him is his new girlfriend Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb), who agrees to move to the other side of the country with him to Los Angeles in the hope that Sylvester will have better luck.
There, after multiple failures and with an impending eviction looming large, Stallone has the idea of a lifetime after watching an underdog push the great Muhammad Ali to the very edge. Within the next three and a half days, the script for Rocky is born. By a stroke of luck, thanks to a patron at his hotel valet day job, he is able to get the script seen by producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, who fall in love with it and immediately want to turn his vision into a reality.
There’s a catch, though. Stallone has to be the lead, which results in the studio refusing to put a failed no-name actor at the center of the movie and instead trying to buy the script from him. Of course, Stallone refuses despite the life-changing money on offer, and the rest, they say, is history. But the film captures that unwavering self-belief and willingness to never back down better than you could ever imagine, giving the entire story the emotional backbone it needs.
Expectations going in were admittedly quite low. Largely, that was due to the fact that Peter Farrelly was at the helm, whose career post-Oscar win has been filled with dud after dud. Here, though, he arguably delivers his best work to date. Working from a screenplay by Peter Gamble, Farrelly expertly balances the two distinctly different halves, allowing just the right amount of time for both to properly land with audiences. He’s also been able to recreate some of Rocky’s most memorable sequences from a behind-the-scenes perspective, resulting in some of the most rewatchable cinematic moments of his career.
It would have been incredibly easy for Farrelly to simply create some cheap nostalgia bait to appease fans and focus almost entirely on the sequences that made Rocky the classic that it is today. But while the movie is structured like many other biopics on paper, it never becomes a tick-box exercise. Instead, it allows audiences the time to become genuinely invested in what is a remarkable story of perseverance and self-belief. It gives those themes the space to breathe rather than shoving them down the audience’s throat and telling us what to think and feel. It’s a surprisingly nuanced approach from Farrelly and one that definitely works to the movie’s advantage.
Much of the film’s success is thanks to a truly outstanding performance from relative newcomer Anthony Ippolito. Perhaps the biggest compliment you can give his work is that not for a single second does it feel like he is trying to portray Stallone. Instead, for those who don’t know I Play Rocky is a thing, they could almost certainly be convinced they were watching Stallone himself in a documentary. Ippolito completely transforms himself and becomes Stallone rather than simply playing a part. It’s such an impressive transformation that there’s a real chance Ippolito could gatecrash the Best Actor conversation with what is a genuinely remarkable turn.
Ippolito is backed up by some terrific supporting performances that serve to elevate the already strong material to a whole new stratosphere. AnnaSophia Robb is an extremely assured and calming presence as Sasha, bringing some much-needed heartfelt emotion to the screen. But it’s P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell who arguably shine the brightest as producing duo Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff. They bring their A game to provide the movie’s standout comedic moments, which were met with thunderous laughter throughout. Both make the most of every second on screen while also bringing a bit of business nous to the occasion.
While it would be easy to label the recreations of some of Rocky’s most famous scenes as knock-off versions, Sean Porter’s cinematography, while familiar to fans of the franchise, is distinctive enough to offer a different perspective on the shooting of the film. He absolutely nails the ’70s aesthetic he is going for, but it has to be said that everything only reaches maximum crowd-pleasing levels once it’s combined with Bill Conti’s original Rocky score. When those familiar notes finally hit, Farrelly knows exactly what he’s doing, building the movie to a crescendo that resulted in the biggest standing ovation I witnessed at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
While undoubtedly I Play Rocky will be dismissed by some as another conventional Hollywood biopic, Farrelly and co. have captured the true underdog nature of what made Stallone’s story so unbelievably magical in the first place. It gives audiences a fascinating insight into the personal challenges he faced and the enormous gamble he took by betting on himself, even when accepting the easier option would still have completely changed his life.
It’s a movie that is bound to resonate with anyone who has ever been told they are not good enough to do something, yet knows deep down that they are. Rocky will never be dethroned as the ultimate underdog story, but I Play Rocky does a phenomenal job of harnessing that spirit without simply trying to replicate it, turning Stallone’s incredible journey into one of the most enjoyable rags-to-riches stories in recent memory.
