Throughout I Play Rocky, a based-on-real-events origin story for the 1976 boxing classic, Sylvester Stallone (Anthony Ippolito) repeatedly insists he must star in the movie because, for all intents and purposes, he is the Italian Stallion. In doing so, however, he negates any reason for watching this corny pantomime, which reveals nothing, stumbles incessantly, and wholly pales in comparison to its iconic subject matter.
Simply put, if you want to watch a great feature about the Hollywood icon’s underdog triumph, just watch his legendary Oscar winner.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, I Play Rocky (in theaters Nov. 6) is a 127-minute game of dress-up from Green Book director Peter Farrelly that vacillates between reverent, community-theater-grade mythologizing and egregious Saturday Night Live-style hijinks.
Excruciatingly phony, its primary purpose is to state, restate, and then restate some more that Stallone put his heart and soul into his Rocky script and refused to give up on his dream of headlining it—just like his never-say-die protagonist’s determination to be a champion. Otherwise, its sole objective is to mine nostalgia for everything it’s worth.
In this instance, it’s not worthy bupkis, which is not to be confused with Butkus, the abandoned puppy whom Stallone adopts after winding up on the streets in early 1970s New York City. The down-on-his-luck guy desperately wants to be an actor.
Alas, everyone thinks he’s only cut out for thug and cop parts, and after a series of letdowns, he turns to softcore porn. At that audition, he’s asked to strip naked and, upon dropping his pants, the female casting agent leans forward in eroticized awe and states, “You’re hired.” There’s no evidence that Stallone had direct input on this scene, but it’s an instance of goofy lionization that sets the tone for the rest of the proceedings.
Working at a movie theater, Stallone meets and woos Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb), who swiftly becomes his wife, the mother of his child, and his biggest supporter, convincing him that if he can’t nab the roles he wants, he should write one for himself. Two years later, Stallone parks cars as a Los Angeles restaurant valet by day and pens prospective movies by night.
Thanks to the fortuitous help of an acquaintance, he lands a meeting with producers Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell). They don’t think he’s right for their current project. Nonetheless, they warm to him after he slips one of his scripts into their “weekend read” pile, and they discover that he has a unique voice.
Inspired by Chuck Wepner’s 15-round TKO loss to Muhammad Ali, Stallone scribbles Rocky in three blistering days. When he takes it to Winkler and Chartoff, they’re so impressed that they immediately agree to go into business together.
From there, the producers swiftly morph into exaggerated caricatures who fret, roll their eyes, and throw up their hands at Stallone rejecting ever-larger writers’ fees because he’s holding out for the lead part.
Doing a passable Stallone impression, Ippolito doesn’t treat his character as a joke. Everyone else, however, acts a fool, led by Tracy Letts as fictional studio boss Sandy Maddox, who rants and raves like a cartoon clown and, in the process, undermines any semblance of reality.
Maddox denigrates boxing pictures as losing propositions and caps Winkler and Chartoff’s budget at a paltry $2 million and yet, for unknown reasons, continues to increase his bribes to Stallone. When those don’t work, Winkler and Chartoff strike a risky deal with Stallone that lets him embody the pugilist.
I Play Rocky subsequently becomes a behind-the-scenes slog populated by one groan-worthy caricature after another, from Stephan James’ Carl Weathers and Kiki Seto’s Talia Shire (both broad and lame) to Jay Duplass’ John G. Avildsen, a director who claims to be a hotshot but, on the basis of Farrelly and screenwriter Peter Gamble’s film, makes not a single meaningful contribution to Rocky save for hiring Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown (Michael Fuchs) and telling Stallone to figure everything out.
Farrelly has his cast perpetually play to the back row, such that the film feels desperate to entertain. Its performances are one-dimensional, with Robb blandly encouraging and sympathetic as the inconsequential Sasha, and Matt Dillon tasked with behaving like a creaky old-school stereotype as Stallone’s dad Frank, who calls his son stupid and ugly to his face.
Not that there’s anything they could do with hokey material that expends almost all its energy on celebrating Stallone as a brave Little Engine That Could whose instincts are categorically correct and whose talent is so prodigious that, at Rocky’s premiere, people leap to their feet to cheer and even Maddox cracks an impressed smile.
Considering its ceaseless hero worship, it’s stunning that I Play Rocky doesn’t recreate the moment in which Balboa bellows, “Yo, Adrian!” That’s probably for the best, since it’s a wan imitation that merely elicits a desire to revisit the real thing. Farrelly generally hews to the historical record, but he constructs his film with a barrage of over-the-top reactions and trailer-ready lines of dialogue, as well as visuals that—especially in contrast to Avildsen’s Rocky—give new meaning to the words “flat” and “lifeless.” Aesthetically as well as dramatically, it’s an exercise in inept duplication.
I Play Rocky doesn’t address Rocky’s seismic impact on Hollywood filmmaking. Instead, it’s too busy drawing obvious one-to-one parallels and slathering praise on Stallone. Unfortunately, its conception of him has less depth than the star’s Wikipedia page, and for all Ippolito’s posturing, he can’t conjure Stallone’s idiosyncratic charisma. It’s a hollow facsimile, all mush-mouthed pronouncements and physical mimicry. Still, it clearly could be worse, as proven by the crummier performances surrounding it.
A glorified television movie that fights tooth and nail to maintain its superficiality, I Play Rocky does a disservice to Rocky, reducing it to just a genre-y expression of its maker’s never-say-die resolve. Not only is it not a heavyweight contender—it’s a pretender that, to quote another blow-throwing Hollywood titan, should keep Stallone’s crowning achievement out of its mouth.
