I Play Rocky Review
I Play Rocky (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Peter Farrelly, written by Peter Gamble and starring Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, P.J. Byrne, Toby Kebbell, Tracy Letts, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon, Stephan James, Kiki Seto, Robert Morgan, Steve Sweeney, Scot Teller, J Nycole, Anthony Ventola and Erik Palladino.
Director Peter Farrelly’s new story about the making of 1976’s Rocky, I Play Rocky, is an entertaining crowd-pleaser that stars the great Anthony Ippolito as the one and only Sylvester Stallone. Ippolito’s performance is so strong that it almost feels like one is watching the real Sly Stallone for pretty much the entire movie. Ippolito has Stallone’s mannerisms and persona imitated to the point where it seems so perfect that it’s hard to notice if the footage the film shows from Rocky towards the end features Stallone or Ippolito. That’s a noble accomplishment.
Farrelly’s film, however, is cut from the same basic cloth as an everyday piece of nostalgic entertainment. That, surprisingly, doesn’t make it less fun to watch even though it’s easy to figure out that Farrelly is making this movie more for movie buffs than for the general public.
AnnaSophia Robb portrays Sasha, Stallone’s eventual partner and lover. They meet cute as he is a ticket taker at a movie theater and she is the box-office ticket salesgirl. Sylvester Stallone (known at the beginning of the movie as “Mike”) woos Sasha at the beginning as he asks her to keep him company because walking the streets could be dangerous for him. This pair hits it off and falls in love. In the interim, Stallone is temporarily homeless and finds a nice dog to befriend and keep him company, which he eventually must sell when he desperately needs cash.
Stallone, a writer, pens some work that gets him in the door of the offices of Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne, very entertaining in this role), who is looking to cast a new film. Irwin and his partner don’t end up offering Stallone a part, but think he has talent and they encourage him to keep writing. Eventually, Stallone writes about boxing even though he’s not a boxer and wants to star in the script he’s written, even though he’s not a big actor, yet.
Director John G. Avildsen (Jay Duplass, simply remarkable) comes on board to direct the project, which has a $2 million initial budget, and Avildsen thinks that Rocky isn’t necessarily a boxing movie, but simply one that has boxing in it. As the producers try to figure out how to shoot cheaply by moving the action from New York to Philly, the movie traces the making of Rocky and the love story between Stallone and Sasha that develops.
There is a humorous casting scene where Carl Weathers (Stephan James) is cast in Rocky as Apollo Creed, Rocky’s opponent in the ring. James is solid in what ultimately turns out to be a very small role. One of the problems with the movie is the boxing angle of it. A boxing choreographer comes to consult Stallone and his filmmakers/producers, but Stallone’s suggestions end up sending him away, packing. Stallone takes over the choreography of the boxing scenes, but we don’t get into as much detail with those scenes as we do with the scenes where Rocky runs around town and hits frozen slabs of meet in a freezer.
Ippolito is everything here. His Stallone is such a perfectly crafted creation that an Oscar nod could happen, given the potency of Ippolito’s work. Matt Dillon as Stallone’s dad is sadly lost in the shuffle, though, with just a few small scenes in the movie. None of these sequences are particularly great, but could have been.
AnnaSophia Robb is excellent as the love of Stallone’s early life who doesn’t want to be lied to and gets mad when Stallone conceals the fact that he has turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars because he, himself, wanted to be the star of Rocky; hence the film’s title. Robb and Ippolito have wonderful chemistry and it’s a shame the movie didn’t develop their relationship more over the course of the scenes with the crew shooting Rocky within the picture.This film tells some of the story behind the making of the 1976 masterpiece, but it also feels like a lot is missing, too.
This film begs the question of whether this movie’s story would have been worth telling if Rocky didn’t win at the Academy Awards and make good money. Yes, the new film is clever in terms of how it re-creates major events from the past, but would this story be as good if Rocky was just a minor hit at the box-office? Probably not.
I Play Rocky is an easy recommendation. It’s precise even when it lacks all the details that would have made it a truly great film. Ippolito could be nominated for Best Actor, especially given how he tackles a role that could have faltered in just about anyone else’s hands. I Play Rocky is at its best in a scene that Stallone made up on the spot when he yells at the character played by Burgess Meredith in the re-creation of a famous scene from the 1976 movie.
I Play Rocky is a really good movie. It checks all the boxes for a movie that the American public will likely adore. At the film’s end, some audiences may want more, and some may be perfectly satisfied and then some. Duplass has a great time as the ambitious director who went on to make the first The Karate Kid, and Robb is adorable, but this is Ippolito’s movie to own and own it, he does. This one is well worth seeing.
Rating: 7.5/10
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