I Play Rocky (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)
I PLAY ROCKY (2026)
Starring Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, P. J. Byrne, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon, Stephan James, Tracy Letts, Kiki Seto, Robert Morgan, Saul Stein, Trevor St. John, Erik Palladino, Rob Demery, Scot Teller, J Nycole, Diego Pope, Arthur Mercante Jr., Anthony Ventola, Michael Fuchs, Martin Fisher, Paul Sloan, Baxter Rogers and Gavin Mariani.
Screenplay by Peter Gamble.
Directed by Peter Farrelly.
Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 128 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Peter Farrelly – one of the writing/directing Farrelly Brothers gone solo – is having an interesting year. Back in March, he released Balls Up! with Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Houser, undoubtedly the year’s worst film. A mere eight months later, he is releasing I Play Rocky, which is shockingly one of the year’s better films.
It seems to be an odd concept for a movie – surveying Sylvester Stallone’s fight to get his screenplay for the film Rocky made. He took a gamble by refusing to sell the project to any studio which would not allow him to also play the leading role, even though there was a bidding war for the script and he was a relative unknown as an actor and the studios wanted “a name.” In fact, even when he did sell the screenplay – at a significant discount in order to take the part – the studio was still not sure who he was, even though he appeared in the 1974 low-budget drama The Lords of Flatbush. That cast also featured then-unknown future stars Henry Winkler and Perry King.
I got a taste of that confusion in an interview I did with Rocky director John G. Avildsen years ago. He told me, “The people at United Artists who financed the movie, they hadn’t heard of this guy. They wanted to see footage of him, so they looked at The Lords of Flatbush. They said, ‘Oh, okay,’ and they signed off on the movie. Now they started looking at the dailies and they said, ‘Where’s Stallone?’ I said, ‘That’s Stallone.’ ‘No, no, no. Stallone’s a blond.’ They thought that Stallone was Perry King. That’s who they thought they were buying.”
Sure, the creation of Rocky is an interesting true story that would probably make a terrific book, but not necessarily one that seems like it would make a compelling feature film. Of course, you could have said that about Farrelly’s previous solo home run, the Oscar-winning, based-on-a-true-story movie Green Book. And much like Green Book, I Play Rocky is not necessarily a masterpiece, but it is a terrific piece of feel-good filmmaking.
Also like Green Book, it sometimes played fast and loose with the truth. This is a sanitized version of the circumstances. However, the original Rocky is such a great film, and the basic story is also a wonderful underdog narrative, so it is hard not to fall under I Play Rocky’s spell.
One of the other critics at the press screening I attended said that the best moments of I Play Rocky were simply when the new film recreated some of the best moments of the original film – and he wasn’t wrong.
But what can I say? I love the original film and revisiting it was a lot of fun. I recognize that it is not necessarily the whole, true story. For example, the movie suggests that Rocky took place in Philadelphia because they could not afford to film in New York. This was somewhat true, but it ignores the fact that Stallone actually went to high school in Northeast Philly’s Lincoln High and spent much of his childhood in the city, and that is why the film was written about Philadelphia.
Heck, in the world of I Play Rocky mother Jackie Stallone and brother Frank Stallone do not appear to exist. (Lack of Frank is debatable as being a terrible thing if you’ve ever read Frank’s social media posts.)
Stallone’s wind-beneath-his-wings wife Sasha is played here as a steadfast advocate by AnnaSophia Robb. While Sasha is totally charming and sweet and Robb plays her with quiet intensity, it is hard to believe that she was quite as compliant as I Play Rocky plays her. The film portrays Sasha as completely supportive of Sly, no matter what. She works hard to pay for their apartment when Sly is out looking for roles. She types (on an electric typewriter!) his screenplays from his chicken-scratch handwritten scripts.
The one time that she calls him out – for not telling her that he was offered $300,000 for the script if he didn't appear in it – she wasn't so mad that he didn't take the money, just that he didn't tell her about it. When he asked her what he should do, she said it was his decision. She didn't want to be responsible for what he did; she just wanted to know about it. The movie doesn’t give any foreshadowing that Sasha was dumped by Sly for actress-model Brigitte Nielsen less than a decade after the action in the film, which sort of illustrates the difference between its romanticized view of Stallone and the real guy.
But I Play Rocky isn’t supposed to be a hard-hitting Hollywood exposé; it is a celebration of a beloved film that in no way should have become as iconic as it has. It is also a reminder of Rocky when it was a tiny labor-of-love, long before all of the sequels dimmed the character’s luster.
That is where I Play Rocky hits its stride – as a nostalgic, loving appreciation of a beloved classic film. It takes you behind the scenes on favorite film moments – like running through South Philly, punching the meat, the nighttime ice-skating date, the championship fight, and of course the Art Museum stairs. And it gives you some (some) understanding of the choices and hardships behind the making of these moments.
Ippolito is good as Stallone. He doesn’t totally look like him, but he has the voice and mannerisms down. Robb is terrific in her slightly one-note character. P.J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell have fun as the producers Irvin Winkler and Robert Chartoff. Stephan James is a hoot as Carl Weathers. In fact, the only performance that doesn’t really work – which is a shame because he’s a terrific actor – is Matt Dillon as Stallone’s overbearing dad. Also, Tracy Letts’ fictional studio exec is played a little broadly.
But you don’t expect hard-hitting realism from half of the team that brought you Dumb and Dumber. Farrelly’s direction is slick but a bit surface-level. He doesn’t dig too deeply into the material but keeps things moving and consistently entertaining.
In the end – much like the film that inspired it – I Play Rocky works. I’m not 100% sure whether it works due to our nostalgia for the original or on its own terms. If someone were not already a fan of Rocky, I’m not sure if this film would work nearly as well. But I’m not going to lie, watching the recreation of Rocky’s angry outburst at trainer Mickey gave me the chills for just a moment.
Mostly, I Play Rocky works because the movie loves Rocky just as much as we do.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 4, 2026.
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