The story of Rocky and its writer-star Sylvester Stallone is so simultaneously out-there and relatable, you’d think it would have long ago been told in movie form. But better late than never: I Play Rocky, directed by Peter Farrelly and written by Peter Gamble, is a crowd-pleaser that fills in the background of one of the greatest crowd-pleasers of its era. Anthony Ippolito—who has come almost out of nowhere, though he previously played Al Pacino on The Offer—stars as the very young, very broke Sylvester Stallone who, when the movie opens, in early 1970s New York, is going by the made-up first name Mike: He thinks it will increase his chances of becoming a star, though the smart, winsome girl he meets, AnnaSophia Robb’s Sasha, persuades him that his given name is actually better. Mike, soon to once again be Sylvester, reads for parts but doesn’t get them. He runs out of money and has to live on the street. He finds a puppy, also in somewhat dire straits, which he names Butkus (after football star Dick). He lands a role in a softcore film, and later gets a job taking tickets at a movie theater. It’s there that he meets Sasha, who will later become his wife. Like so many guys in so many movies before him, he tells her his dreams: He wants very badly to be an actor, and if he has to write his own roles to get there, that’s what he’ll do.
AnnaSophia Robb as Sasha and Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester, taking in the product of their labor —Courtesy of Amazon MGM
As a director, Farrelly knows what will appeal to audiences, and that’s a pro, not a con. With his brother, Bobby, he made some of the signature comedies of the ‘90s, among them Dumb & Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. These were ridiculous movies, but also openhearted ones, motivated by an essential sweetness of spirit. Farrelly’s 2018 Green Book—in which Mahershala Ali plays jazz pianist Don Shirley, who hires Viggo Mortensen’s Tony “Lip” Vallelonga as a driver before embarking on a tour of the deep South—won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, though it faced fierce backlash for what critics saw as its obsession with “white savior” tropes. Those criticisms had some validity, but they also had the less-positive effect of diminishing Ali’s terrific performance. And audiences who’d loved the movie as a story of friendship were made to feel they’d been racially insensitive, or had somehow simply taken the wrong ideas from the picture. The Green Book story shows how a filmmaker’s essentially good intentions can’t protect him from the ways in which his movie might be received.
Ippolito as Stallone as Rocky, in the meat locker scene —Courtesy of Amazon MGM
Ippolito looks and sounds so much like the young Stallone—with the same glottal drawl, the same sleepy, sad-sack eyes—that he may as well be transporting us back in time, to an era when a little movie could make it big against all odds. Farrelly has populated I Play Rocky with terrific supporting players, including Stephan James as Carl Weathers, the flashy actor who would bring Rocky’s opponent Apollo Creed to life, and Jay Duplass as John G. Avildsen, the no-bull director Chartoff and Winkler bring in to helm the project. (He can deliver a film on time and within budget. He’s also, as he himself says, “known to be something of a dick.”)
A million things will go wrong before Rocky eventually plays to, and thrills, audiences. I Play Rocky chronicles those mishaps, those thorny negotiations, those times when Stallone was so intent on giving the performance of a lifetime that he hurt himself physically. When Rocky Balboa punches those carcasses in the meat locker, they’re frozen solid, the equivalent of driving your first into a slab of granite. Ippolito makes you feel how much it hurts, which is also part of what makes his character’s eventual, unexpected victory—a runaway hit film—so sweet. Farrelly, like Stallone before him, knows what audiences like to see. I Play Rocky hits all the right beats—and sometimes, isn’t that just what we want? Every day, algorithms tell us what we ought to like. A human who knows what works has come to feel like a rarity.
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