Director: Bassam Tariq
Writers: Bassam Tariq
Stars: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito

Synopsis: Follows Latif, a devoutly religious hitman, who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.

Many people, at some point in our lives, have looked up to a higher power for answers. Being a devout follower of a religion and keeping your faith alive in even the shakiest moments of life, leading with the hope that someone is listening to your prayers and will come through as long as you believe. However, when that belief is shaken by personal hardships and loss, what then becomes of that side of ours, especially when it is most needed in those moments to find a path forward? What kind of a person will you be then? These are the central questions and themes of Bassam Tariq’s film, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.

Latif (Mahershala Ali) is a hitman who does his work as a “sword” for God, taking out targets who would otherwise bring harm upon others using only a blade at his disposal. A devoutly religious man who constantly looks to his faith to guide his hand and pave the way for him and his family, he finds his life shattered to pieces when his wife dies, leaving him alone to care for his three children, distraught and wondering why, after everything he has given to God, he is instead losing more. When he is given a job to take on Hwan Yoon (John Cho), a religious leader whose grip is tightening around Houston, Latif is torn between the trials and tribulations that arise from this situation, as well as having to care for his children, particularly his baby daughter Aziza who is in desperate need of breastmilk after her mother’s passing.

The title Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother comes from a hadith in Islam that highlights the account of a man asking who is most deserving of respect and love. The Prophet responds with “your mother.” When asked who comes next, the Prophet responds once again with “your mother”, and when asked who comes third, the Prophet says “your mother.” The man asks a fourth time, at which point he receives a different answer, but that is a discovery the movie holds on for a while. As Latif makes his way through life in the movie, the impact of his wife’s loss is one that informs every decision and emotional response, as he begins to reckon with being a father more than ever and having to be there for his children, who he has been distant from, thanks to his work. The biggest challenge comes through Cho’s Paster Hwan, who is menacing in the role as a conservative church leader who wants to “liberate” places where Islam is practiced. With his faith being on the line now as well, with less things working out for him and his work bringing danger to the doorstep, the characterization for Latif becomes far more complex, and brought to life brilliantly by Ali, giving one of his strongest and most powerful performances to date, and one of the year’s best in general.

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect of Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is its look into religion and its beauty, even when you find yourself doubting it. While Latif may not be perfect, and he feels increasingly distanced from God, the movie often has moments, like with Latif’s children Fatiha and Qadir, brought to life by incredible performances from Adia and Jahleel Kamara, and his mosque’s imam (Giancarlo Esposito) that serve as a reminder of the paths we travel and finding a sense of absolution and goodness through it all, and how even when things seem strained, there is something to anchor us. It makes Bassam Tariq’s writing and direction all the more nuanced and transcendent in moments, especially elevated by Katelin Arizmendi’s stunning cinematography, which contains some of the year’s best visuals, and Son Lux’s wonderful score, proving to often be a celebration of Islam and capturing some incredibly powerful moments that elevate the movie and give more credence to its events.

Make no mistake, though, as Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother may be emotionally somber and look into such thematically deep aspects of its story, it is also extremely effective as an action thriller, especially when Latif has to take on multiple people going up against him and trying to evade a situation. The action is kinetic and terrifically filmed, with some brilliantly choreographed moments that are stunningly realized. It once again makes you lament that Tariq and Ali, who were previously attached to Blade at Marvel, never got to realize that vision, but the work here makes for more than effective compensation. To top it off, the movie is also extremely funny, with more than a handful of comedic moments and even running jokes that add levity to the increasingly darker story threads and escalating tensions. Among everything, the movie also nails its themes of fatherhood and Latif’s connection to his children, leading even more to some of the movie’s most emotionally strong and funny moments. The balance of these tonal shifts, expertly handled by Tariq, is commendable.

There is not a single second in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother that is wasted. Every moment of visual storytelling, every line of dialogue, every shot feels like it is brimming with purpose, and each minute detail eventually has a payoff that makes every decision, particularly towards the final act as everything begins to come together. The result is a powerful, thrilling, funny, heartfelt, and beautiful movie that succeeds on every level. This is a brilliant showcase for Bassam Tariq as a storyteller and Mahershala Ali’s acting prowess. Further backed by excellent supporting turns and the movie’s vibrant visual canvas, the result is one of the best movies of the year.

Grade: A+

Director: Susanna White
Writer: Suzie Miller
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Daniel Ings, Noma Dumezweni

Synopsis: Follows Tessa, an ambitious defense lawyer. She expertly represents her clients, including those who are accused of sexual assault. However, she finds out that the law does not provide justice after being raped by a coworker.

Popular stage-to-film adaptations have often become the darlings of Academy Awards voters, with over a dozen walking away with the coveted Best Picture Award. The latest to attempt the feat is Prima Facie, based on the one-woman show written by playwright Suzie Miller that landed actress Jodie Comer a Tony Award. Sadly, though, despite a brilliant turn from lead Cynthia Erivo, the film adaptation falls afoul of becoming an ultimately disappointing courtroom drama.

The film follows Tessa (Cynthia Erivo), a young, hard-working British defense barrister who has forged a notorious winning streak in the courtroom and garnered awards for her fierce approach. Via a rather annoying inner monologue that plagues much of the runtime, often spelling out thoughts and emotions that Erivo is perfectly capable of conveying herself, the audience learns of Tessa’s disdain for some of her fellow lawyers who received preferential treatment to get where they are. Meanwhile, she has had to overcome crippling imposter syndrome and being looked down upon to become one of the best in her firm. Her formidable reputation has largely been built on winning sexual assault cases, looking for any loophole the law allows before hounding victims on the stand to secure her clients a victory.

Everything on the surface is going brilliantly, and not just in her career, which is about to take another leap forward via a high-profile job offer. Her personal life is thriving too. Her brother, Johnny (Toheeb Jimoh), has just been told he’s about to become a dad for the first time, while Tessa has started a promising relationship with her co-worker Julian (Daniel Ings), who everyone regards as extremely charming. That is until one night, after the pair share what was seemingly a nice date, Julian rapes Tessa. Now finding herself on the other side of the legal system, with her whole world shattered into pieces, Tessa’s faith in that system is about to face the toughest test imaginable.

The biggest problem with Prima Facie is that it feels like two distinctly different movies stitched together to create one rather messy whole. Suzie Miller also penned the screenplay for the adaptation, which makes the first half feel all the more baffling. For those who go in blind, they could easily think the story is primarily about a Black barrister trying to make it in a whitewashed profession, where she faces prejudice while suffering from debilitating self-doubt. Around an hour of the movie’s 109-minute runtime is dedicated to building out Tessa’s life, to the point that it feels like an entirely different drama from the one that eventually emerges.

That tonal mismatch becomes even more glaring after the rape occurs and the film reveals its central dramatic conflict. Outside of a couple of scenes dealing with the immediate aftermath, it quite literally fast-forwards 1,107 days into the future. There’s no real delving into what happened to the personal and professional life we’ve been a part of up until that point, leaving huge parts of Tessa’s journey open to interpretation.

It’s such a significant gap because the first half spends so much time establishing her career, relationships and complicated attitude toward the very system she will eventually have to rely upon. By the movie’s own admission, the cases Tessa had been working on are like a “taxi rank:” you get what you’re given. It leaves open the uncomfortable question of whether, during those 1,107 days, Tessa continued fighting defense cases for accused sexual assaulters.

Skipping almost three years means the movie jumps over what could have been some of its most fascinating material. How did returning to work affect her? Did her approach to sexual assault cases change? How did somebody who had spent years exploiting weaknesses in victims’ testimony reconcile that with suddenly becoming a victim herself? Rather than feeling deliberately ambiguous, it feels like an entire act is missing.

From there, Prima Facie settles into a courtroom drama centered on Julian’s trial. At least there, the movie does a decent job of portraying the lengths defense attorneys will go to in order to reduce a woman’s claim to nothing. Simon Russell Beale plays Julian’s defense attorney, spinning stories that mess with the jury’s heads and seeking to take advantage of a vulnerable Tessa without outright calling her a liar. It’s an uncomfortable process, but one that feels necessary to highlight some of the gaping flaws in the justice system surrounding sexual assault.

Director Susanna White also delivers some incredibly chilling scenes that will move many to their core. One particular sequence, where Tessa’s mom June (Noma Dumezweni) is seen cleaning Tessa in the bathroom as a way of depicting her washing away the “shame” she feels, is particularly moving and hard-hitting. It’s handled in a way that doesn’t feel preachy and genuinely comes across as sympathetic toward the many victims of sexual assault.

However, those nuanced moments are too infrequent for the subject matter to consistently carry the visceral impact that it should. Particularly during the courtroom sequences, there are moments that feel overly familiar and almost engineered to become an awards player rather than anything outright profound. There was a chance for Prima Facie to dig deeper into both the prevalence of sexual violence against women and the difficulties victims face when seeking justice. Instead, aside from some text at the end highlighting alarming statistics, that wider discussion feels somewhat like an afterthought.

Cynthia Erivo, to her credit, does the very best she can with the material she’s given. The internal monologues often work against her rather than with her, unnecessarily explaining emotions that are already evident in her performance. Even so, she compellingly shows a multitude of different sides to her character. It’s genuinely impressive how she can go from a tender, caring person full of energy to a trauma-fueled individual showing all the signs of dissociating from the world around her. It’s a performance that absolutely deserves recognition but may find itself lost amid the movie’s shortcomings.

It’s abundantly clear what Prima Facie wants to say about a legal system that can make seeking justice an ordeal in itself for victims of sexual assault, something Miller’s play powerfully pointed out. The film adaptation has flashes where that message lands with devastating force, helped enormously by Erivo’s performance, but its decision to skip over such a crucial part of Tessa’s journey stops it from hitting as hard as it should.

That doesn’t mean the film has nothing worthwhile to say. If Prima Facie sparks conversations around how sexual assault cases are handled and encourages meaningful change, its impact could extend far beyond its shortcomings as a movie. But judged as an adaptation and a piece of cinema, there’s a frustrating feeling that a far more powerful version of Prima Facie was sitting somewhere within this one.

Grade: C-

Directors: Mike Leigh
Writer: Mike Leigh
Stars: Kate O’Flynn, Alice Bailey Johnson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson

Synopsis: Amy, a government child protection worker, moves back with her upbeat best friend Rosie, a social services officer facing daily anger and resentment. Amy’s aging parents worry about her happiness while dealing with their own crisis.

At the age of 83 and after a career spanning more than five decades, acclaimed filmmaker Mike Leigh is seemingly bowing out with his latest movie, Tender Loving Care; his supposed final swansong. If that is to be the case, this is a brilliant note to exit on. True to its title, it is a tender, heartfelt story that delves deeply into how we as humans have the capacity to take great care of one another while also offering a different perspective on how we sometimes don’t. The result is a rather profound experience that even manages to pack in a few laughs as well as tears along the way.

Tender Loving Care follows childhood best friends and social workers, Amy (Kate O’Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), who are living together following Amy’s rather unceremonious breakup. It’s seemingly the perfect scenario for the pair as they share wine, laughs, and stories from work while performing one of the most thankless jobs around in an increasingly underfunded government sector. Both are overworked to the point of exhaustion while also wrestling with the internal struggle of feeling like they aren’t even making a difference. That’s before getting into their personal troubles as they gossip about their tragic dating lives.

Leigh’s screenplay also allows audiences to spend time with Amy’s aging parents, Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson), who are the most typical British old married couple you’ll ever likely see, but for all the right reasons. They spend their days worrying about Amy’s happiness and when, or if, grandchildren will ever actually surface. So the news that Amy is single again comes as something of a welcome shock, as her partners are humorously never deemed good enough. Newly single, Amy finds herself visiting more often and even brings along Rosie, allowing audiences to see all four delightfully share the screen together. That warmth takes on a different complexion, however, when Geoff begins to show signs of cognitive decline.

Through a somewhat familiar story, Leigh explores a variety of themes, all of which are handled with an immense amount of care. The family dynamics are given the time to organically progress, allowing audiences to develop a genuine affection for characters they’ve only just met thanks to some superb writing. Leigh also knows exactly when to simply let these characters talk, with some of the quieter moments and awkward silences proving to be the most effective. It ensures that when Geoff’s cognitive decline becomes apparent and part of the day-to-day lives of Birdie and Amy, it lands with an emotional gut punch that is bound to resonate with many audience members who have experienced something similar.

Leigh also provides some extremely poignant commentary on the state of the United Kingdom’s continually declining state-funded services, utilizing Amy and Rosie as a means of outlining just how severe the social crisis is becoming. It’s a particular battle for the frequently underappreciated social workers who find themselves targeted by abhorrent abuse while simply trying to do their jobs. It’s a stroke of genius to utilize what could be his final screenplay to highlight such pertinent issues gripping a nation. For those unaware of those struggles beforehand, they will be acutely aware of them by the end.

Some of the very best moments of the film come from its beautifully crafted dialogue. Leigh has this rare talent to, in one moment, create some of the hardest-hitting dramatic scenes simply through actors conversing, only to have you in stitches the next thanks to the effortless chemistry he is able to create. The humor never feels forced either, instead coming naturally from the relationships and personalities that Leigh has established. It ensures you’re in for an emotional rollercoaster of a ride, but it’s one you can’t help but be enamored by as your connection to the story and its characters is given the space to gradually develop.

Of course, for a movie like Tender Loving Care to work as well as it does, it relies heavily on its four leads, and every one of them steps up to the mark. You would be hard-pressed to find four performances all year that reach the levels this ensemble achieves. Kate O’Flynn, as the movie’s lead, is truly sensational. She finds the ideal balance between her wicked sense of humor and the necessary dramatic turns her character demands, with some of her acting through facial expressions alone verging on heartbreaking at times. Alice Bailey Johnson, as her partner in crime, is consistently asked to be the main source of comic relief, and it’s a challenge she more than rises to, showing exactly why she deserves a more prominent role in future projects.

Supporting our main duo are the wonderful Paul Jesson and Marion Bailey, who are equally outstanding. Bailey gets more screen time, playing a concerned mother and an increasingly devastated, loving wife as Geoff’s illness becomes clearer. It’s a multifaceted role that requires her to shift her emotions at the flick of a switch, and it’s a challenge she meets time and time again. Jesson, especially in the final act, has virtually the entire weight of the film’s emotional core on his shoulders. He handles Geoff’s changes incredibly well as his condition worsens, making some of the final moments incredibly difficult to watch.

Ultimately, Tender Loving Care is a desperate cry for humanity to show more compassion toward one another, and it feels like it has arrived at an incredibly pertinent time. That message is woven throughout the movie, whether it’s through Amy and Rosie’s friendship, Birdie’s love for Geoff, or the care both women continue to provide through their work despite everything being thrown at them. Given Leigh’s previous abundance of Academy Award nominations and just how exquisitely written this movie is, it’s hard to imagine a world where he isn’t in contention yet again. It would be a well-deserved send-off for an accomplished filmmaker and another brilliant, moving original that deserves to be experienced by the masses.

Grade: B+

Director: Michael Dowse
Writer: Michael Dowse
Stars: Jay Baruchel, Ed Helms, Laurence Leboeuf

Synopsis: The film chronicles the daredevil stuntman Ken Carter’s quest to execute a bold stunt of launching a rocket car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States in the 1970s, facing absurd challenges along the way.

Anyone likely seeing Michael Dowse’s The Stunt Driver probably hasn’t seen Robert Fortier’s The Devil at Your Heels, the movie that inspired this dramatized biopic about stuntman Ken Carter (Jay Baruchel) attempting to jump the St. Lawrence River in a rocket car. Unless you’re Canadian, the existence of the National Film Board might not ring a bell, but Fortier’s documentary will make you understand the type of individual Kenneth Gordon Polsjek is at a much deeper level than Dowse’s surface-level attempt to “blockbusterize” such an event, as he blurs the line between the artifice of documentary and fiction filmmaking. 

Dowse frequently incorporates 16mm footage from Fortier’s documentary, even casting Joe Cobden as the director who follows Carter’s crazy dream for about five years, while also recreating scenes from The Devil at Your Heels with Baruchel as Carter. But he’ll also occasionally insert shots of the real-life Carter analyzing the ramp he built for a stunt that not even Evel Knievel (Ben Foster) will perform, as he switches formats (16mm to 35mm to digital), aspect ratios, and lenses to bring a multifaceted portrait of a long-lost Canadian figure who should have his time in the spotlight. 

In a way, this artistic intent seems refreshing. Instead of a traditional “cradle-to-the-grave” biopic, here’s a form-blurring movie that floats between two types of documentaries (one designed to parse who Carter is, the other, produced by the Japanese, to bring him down), and the fiction film Dowse is directing. The Goon filmmaker will change a few elements of the story, notably who ends up attempting the stunt, but stays mostly true to what has happened through note-perfect recreations of the event and Jay Baruchel’s best-ever performance. He’s the reason why the movie remains mostly watchable, as he perfectly represents Ken’s desire to be remembered within the history books of the great (if not the greatest) stunt performers who ever lived. 

There’s a quote in The Devil at Your Heels that is, of course, repeated in The Stunt Driver which encapsulates everything about Carter’s desire to jump: 

“This is my dream. This is the end of my dream. I don’t care if I never jump again, but this I’m going to do. This is my dream. I created it, I built it, I designed it. Nobody ever jumped a car a mile. That’s what I’m gonna do. It’s what I want to do. And it’s what I’m gonna do. The thing about it is, it’s something you only dream about. What I can do: jump 18-19 cars, 20 cars? Go out there and bust more bones? You’re right, I’m getting too old! But not old enough to do this.” 

When he says it at the end of the documentary, you feel the urgency that this is what he needs to do, as crazy as it is. Jumping a mile from Canada to the United States through a large ramp in a rocket car that certainly won’t fly is what medical professionals might describe as suicide. But we feel for him enough that we want him to do it. 

In The Stunt Driver, when Baruchel recreates this monologue, the effect is minimal, because Dowse has no idea what to say about Carter. He treats him as an almost mythic figure, but with no real interior exploration of who he is. In contrast with Fortier’s documentary, which actively does the work of examining him inside and outside the stunt community, The Stunt Driver falls short at illuminating audiences to a long-lost figure who deserves his time in the spotlight for the crazy stuff he attempted to do, because he, of course, never jumped the river. There were too many errors, too many bad-weather attempts, and the project’s backers eventually chickened out after one attempt left a driver severely injured. The bad ingredients kept piling up until it became unsustainable. 

As a result, The Stunt Driver isn’t about the stunt itself, but about Carter’s stature within the pantheon of Canadian figures. Unfortunately, Dowse is too busy shifting aspect ratios at every second to bother giving a thoughtful interrogation of its titular character. But he also doesn’t give much development to Dick Keller (Ed Helms), the designer who helped bring Ken’s rocket car to life; Even Kneivel, who is far more humanized in Fortier’s film than in the way Dowse depicts him; and Carter’s girlfriend, Gloria (Laurence Leboeuf), who just stands there, smoking cigarettes. What texture do they give the character? It doesn’t exist. They’re just shells of the selves that are far more developed in a documentary that’s freely available to view online. 

The recreations are fun, sure, but they don’t make a movie, especially when Dowse has no idea what to say about the figure he depicts. He multiplies points of view and modes of filmmaking, but what does that serve if the central narrative itself is devoid of meaning? The only thing you’ll learn about Ken Carter while watching The Stunt Driver is that he was a stuntman with a crazy dream. You’ll never get a chance to see his humble beginnings, the life he had before his desire for risk, nor the ethics of such a stunt through his perspective, and not his backers’. It’s a movie that wants to celebrate him, without knowing what to celebrate, ultimately resulting in a vacuous affair that once again proves Canadian cinema’s detractors right. Our industry is in shambles, and if we keep making mediocre films like these, it may not survive.

At least the documentary will stand the test of time, provided more audiences seek it out…

Grade: D

Director:  Rebel Wilson
Writer:  Rebel Wilson
Stars: Rebel Wilson, Jennifer Coolidge, Guz Khan, Randall Park

Synopsis:  Rebel Wilson plays a former girl group star from the early naughties who is forced to coach a rag tag bunch of teen girls to make them into a group for a record label competition.

It’s an extremely rare occurrence to watch a movie at any festival and, as the credits roll, scratch your head as to what you’ve just witnessed, but that is an unceremonious award that suitably belongs to Rebel Wilson’s Girl Group. A movie devoid of any sign of creative integrity, filled to the brim with painfully unfunny gags, and masquerading as the cheapest imitation of Pitch Perfect to date, it can only be described as a car crash happening in slow motion from start to finish.

Girl Group follows Tassie Young (Rebel Wilson), a washed-up former star of a 1990s Spice Girls knock-off called Gurlfriends. Three decades later, as the band reforms for a comeback tour, Tassie finds herself unwanted by the group and, after a run-in with the law, is forced to take on community service. This leads her to become a tutor for a new ragtag girl group as they enter a battle-of-the-bands-style competition. There, they face their stiffest competition in the form of the Cream Team, whose manager (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) has drilled them into becoming somewhat unstoppable.

If that premise sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The movie is unashamedly an amalgamation of the storylines of Pitch Perfect 1 & 2. We have the initial formation of a group made up of “cast-offs” who all bear a remarkable resemblance to the original Pitch Perfect cast. We have antagonists who, once again, look almost identical to the Das Sound Machine group from Pitch Perfect 2. If that isn’t enough, the new girl group, whose name is as forgettable as the rest of the story, performs an original song in the finale that goes against the rules of the competition. Funnily enough, that is also the very same climax as Pitch Perfect 2.

There’s not one element of Rebel Wilson’s script that feels even vaguely unique. Every narrative beat has been done before and done so much better, from the failed mid-movie performance to the inevitable reuniting of the band after an attempt to pull at some emotional heartstrings, before ultimately winning over audiences with their newly reunited front. There are no two ways about it: Girl Group is a cheap cosplay of an iconic movie that is still enjoyed by many around the world today.

Even the characters created in this mess bear such a striking resemblance to those from other movies that it becomes rather insulting. Worse still, there’s nothing particularly memorable about any of them, so much so that you could make a game out of trying to guess the characters’ names when the credits roll and you’d be hard pressed to name more than one. The only real exception is Henrietta (Mia Kaplan), and that’s because she’s forced to be the “Fat Amy” of the group and is persecuted for her differences throughout, something that feels rather baffling given the core themes the movie tries to explore.

The young cast are entirely blameless. They ultimately do their very best with the dreadful material they are given in what is, for many of them, their first major role in a Hollywood production. But they feel doomed from the get-go. Even when the film tries to take a more profound look at female empowerment and the oversexualization of the music industry, it devolves into a tick-box exercise that culminates in one of the most painfully misplaced rap scenes I think I have ever seen.

What’s equally tiresome are the endless attempts to be funny that fall flatter than a pancake. There’s an effort to be insightful by creating jokes about the current state of the music industry, including how artists succumb to drinking and driving or using drugs while believing they are above the law. It’s essentially just pointing out things that people already think and expecting them to be greeted with an abundance of laughter. Instead, it results in some truly uncomfortable and cringey extended scenes, with the punchline delivery getting worse and worse the longer the movie rolls on.

Even the one thing you would expect to be a slam dunk, the musical sequences, becomes a slog to get through. When the clearly accomplished vocalists in the cast are allowed to perform stripped-back covers, they actually excel, but those moments are few and far between. Instead, we get obnoxiously loud, in-your-face songs that have been autotuned beyond anything resembling a natural sound, drowning out any semblance of genuine vocal ability. Even the production design of the big stage performances becomes an eyesore. From the blaring, flashing lights to the terrible mall stages, it all becomes one enormous assault on the senses for all the wrong reasons.

What’s painfully ironic is that Girl Group centers around people rediscovering their own voices, yet Rebel Wilson’s script is completely devoid of one of its own. Whether it aimed to be a crowd-pleaser or offer up nostalgia to those who grew up with Pitch Perfect, sadly, it completely misses the mark. A cheap and lousy imitation of the films that made Wilson a household name, Girl Group is quite comfortably the worst movie of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Grade: F

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.

Grade: A-