Peter Farrelly’s feel-good retelling of the story behind Rocky is pure cheese, but Anthony Ippolito’s charming performance pulls the movie back from the edge.
Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, screened at this year’s Rome Film Fest, tells the extraordinary story behind one of cinema’s most enduring underdog tales. Anthony Ippolito stars as Sylvester Stallone, a struggling actor who spends time on the streets taking parts in adult movies, barely making ends meet. After moving to Hollywood, he writes the hit movie Rocky in just a three and a half days, then refuses to sell the script unless he can play the lead himself. With producers pushing for a more bankable star, Stallone stakes everything on his belief in himself.
I have to admit that at first, I was far from convinced. Farrelly’s film is so over-stylised and relentlessly sentimental that it veers into parodying the very Hollywood underdog story it aims to celebrate. The dialogue is cheesy, the emotional beats are telegraphed from a mile away, and after an hour in I was half considering leaving the cinema. Every scene seems determined to remind us that we are watching the making of a classic, with the film’s own significance practically announced at every turn.
But then there’s Ippolito, who plays a charming Stallone (more than Stallone deserves, perhaps), bringing a warmth and vulnerability to the role that carries the film through even its most painfully on the nose moments. He has the physicality and voice down, but it’s his ability to deliver the most implausibly earnest lines with complete conviction that makes the performance work.
In the end, I Play Rocky won me over. For all its excesses, Farrelly understands the particular magic of a film made against the odds, and Ippolito gives that magic a human face. I found myself swept up in the very sentimentality I’d spent the first hour resisting and left the theatre full of nostalgic joy at the power of cinema.
If you’re looking for a cheesy, feel-good film for a Sunday night, I Play Rocky will hit the spot.
The 21st edition of the Rome Film Fest is running from October 13th to 25th, 2026.
