I Play Rocky

By Joanna Langfield

Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky feels like a movie equivalent of a tribute band: appreciative, entertaining and, if you squint hard enough, familiar.

This is a retelling of how the Rocky movie got made, not an actual mimic of the real thing. An actor new to me, Anthony Ippolito, gets the dubious task of playing Sylvester Stallone. This isn’t the iconic Sly so many of us know, it’s the homeless young man who takes in a stray dog, writes screenplays and tries to land a legitimate acting gig. (Sly, we are told, has no problem getting cast in pronos. Hey, he was young and needed the money.) The story takes us through marriage, fatherhood and the very complicated birth of the movie that made him famous. It’s sweet and inspiring. And that’s nice.

The whole movie is rather nice. Farrelly isn’t shooting to make the big art Stallone insisted upon for his film. This one is for the fans. And, for that, it plays very well. He does include a few neat “insider” moments. I appreciated the nod to the original film’s incorporation of the first StediCam and some rueful jokes about Bill Conti’s now classic theme song.

Ippolito acquits himself well in a task that should seem daunting. His physical interpretation of Stallone, the way he moves and holds his head, works, even if his garbled dialogue, at times, does not. He’s best in the more dramatic scenes, shaking off the yoke of the role and going for it. I’ll be happy to see what he does next.

Stephan James is fun as Creed, as is Jay Duplass as John Avildsen but the most delicious performance is from the great Tracy Letts, dandily vicious as the smarmy exec who loves to say no.