I Play Rocky Movie Review:

Rocky is perhaps the greatest underdog story in all of cinematic history. The only story that can even stand toe-to-toe with Rocky Balboa and fight for that title is Sylvester Stallone’s own real life tale of how he launched his legacy with that film. I Play Rocky is based on the extraordinary true story of a struggling actor fighting against all odds to launch his career by writing himself an amazing script, brawling tooth-and-nail with studio executives to cast him as the lead in his own story, and casually rewriting the rules of filmmaking in more ways than one.

Director: Peter Farrelly

Cast: Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, PJ Byrne, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon

Even though we know that Stallone has poured his own life experiences into creating Rocky, the story of how he got the first film made, is still replete with as much warmth, heart, and cinematic moments as Rocky itself. You cannot help but be swept away by the sheer beauty of the miraculous sequence of events that laid the foundations of Stallone’s unshakeable legacy. Peter Farrelly’s film is neither loaded with saccharine deception nor does it try to deconstruct the story to cynical ends. It is a mistake biopics often make, they either make their characters impossibly perfect and thereby plastic. Or in order to be grounded and realistic, they highlight the shadows of their subjects too harshly. I Play Rocky, thankfully, is more interested in the spirit of Rocky than a caricature of Stallone. The film also never shows the studio executives or Stallone’s wife Sasha as cinematic obstacles for the actor to overcome. They are as human as Stallone. The film is as awestruck and full of admiration towards the story as we are.

If Rocky is about going the distance, I Play Rocky is about conviction. It is as the title says it, an affairmation that Stallone has to say again and again until the world finally budges. The film could have spent more time depicting the several interesting behind-the-scenes incidents that happened during the shooting of Rocky. And we do get them. But a lot of scenes are dedicated to focus on the time when the studio negotiates with Stallone. That is how you know that the film has really grasped the soul of the story. The studio executives keep increasing the price from $ 25,000 to almost $ 3,00,000 just so Stallone would give up the script and budge from the stipulation of playing the lead character himself. This incredible resilience mirrors how Rocky refused to go down in his fight with Apollo Creed.

The way Anthony Ippolito embodies Sylvester Stallone to the minutest detail, is almost demonic. When Ippolito recreates scenes from Rocky, if not for the other actors inside the frame, it is easy to believe you might be watching footage from the original. Ippolito excels in his understanding of the difference between Stallone and Rocky. Stallone is intelligent and sophisticated, traits unfortunately smothered by his speech impediment. Stallone is desperate to prove to the world he is capable of more. Rocky, atleast in the first film, is anything but sophisticated. And he wants to prove to himself that he is not a bum. Ippolito nails this subtle difference. 

Rocky is more than just a boxing film and I Play Rocky is more than just an actor’s biopic. It is a rousing tale of a man, beaten down by life, standing up for himself, and resisting every urge to take anything lesser than what he dreamed of. It shows you why Rocky remains to be one of the most inspirational characters of all time. The blueprint stretches all the way to Stallone’s personality. By refusing to sell out his dreams, Stallone inspires everybody around him to help him. Who would have thought then that a film with a nobody playing the lead, with a shoestring budget, could launch the greatest action star of our times, write the formula for sports drama to this day, invent the steadicam that revolutionised filmmaking, and give us that iconic Bill Conti music? If I Play Rocky is not based on a true story, it would have been brushed off as being too conveniently cinematic. And that was only just the beginning of Sylvester Stallone’s legacy.

However, I Play Rocky is not about Stallone, it is about how the spirit of Rocky was forged. In his Oscar acceptance speech for Rocky (receiving the Academy Award for Best Picture) Sylvester Stallone said “To all the Rocky’s in the world, I love you.” I Play Rocky shows you how Stallone understood Rocky before he understood Stallone, and why it was important for him to tell the story, to tell the Rocky’s of the world that they are not alone, and why they should go the distance, and fight for their dreams. Rocky started with a writer creating an underdog character with love and care. I Play Rocky is that same character coming back around after decades of building a rich legacy, to celebrate the writer.