{"id":15309,"date":"2026-11-07T11:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T16:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=15309"},"modified":"2026-11-07T11:21:42","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T16:21:42","slug":"i-play-rocky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/11\/07\/i-play-rocky\/","title":{"rendered":"I Play Rocky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I Play Rocky <\/strong>(2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amazon MGM\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong language, brief sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Farrelly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Gamble\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Palmer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sean Porter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 6, 2026 (US, limited)\/November 20, 2026 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, P.J. Byrne, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon, Stephan James, Tracy Letts, Kiki Seto, Robert Morgan, Michael Fuchs, Saul Stein, Trevor St. John, Erik Palladino, Rob Demery, Scott Teller.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 1976 movie Rocky is a classic underdog story. Getting it to the big screen is an underdog story in its own right. 50 years later, it\u2019s finally being told.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Peter Farrelly seems an unlikely choice to direct I Play Rocky<\/strong>. That is, if you\u2019re only thinking of the crude comedies (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and There\u2019s Something About Mary) he used to make with baby brother Bobby in the 90s. You\u2019re forgetting he showed us a completely different side of himself with the outstanding 2018 Best Picture winner Green Book. It proves he\u2019s a legit filmmaker. Peter reminds us of this fact with I Play Rocky<\/strong>, a gripping behind-the-scenes drama of the making of Rocky, one of the defining films of the 70s and one that still resonates with viewers today.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before he was Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, he was a young actor named Mike Stallone (Ippolito, The Offer) who had a hard time finding work. It was his future wife Sasha (Robb, Soul Surfer) who not only suggested he go by his first name Sylvester but also encouraged him to take his destiny into his own hands by writing his own script. He comes up with the idea for Rocky after watching the Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight at a bar. It takes him three and a half days to finish it and that\u2019s not even the hardest part of his endeavor.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sly takes his finished script to producers Robert Chartoff (Kebbell, For All Mankind) and Irwin Winkler (Byrne, The Rainmaker) who love it. What they don\u2019t love is the condition it comes with. Sly will only let them make it if he plays Rocky. They want a more marketable star like Ryan O\u2019Neal or Clint Eastwood. Studio rep Sandy Maddox (Letts, Ford v Ferrari) refuses to agree to it. He keeps upping his offer to buy the young actor\u2019s screenplay. Sly turns every offer down. He\u2019s determined to play Rocky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Obviously, the movie goes into production with Stallone playing the title role. It, of course, comes with conditions. It has to be made for under $1M and it can\u2019t go even one day over schedule. It\u2019s a challenging shoot rife with problems (e.g. injuries, the union, money runs out), but Sly refuses to give up. Rocky is his baby.<\/p>\n

\u00a0How terrific is I Play Rocky<\/strong>? I didn\u2019t want it to end. I was sad to see the end title card pop up at the end. I wanted more. I was absolutely engrossed the entire time. A lot of that has to do with my passion for film. I love \u201cmaking of\u201d movies about movies. This one is especially well done. The casting is right on point. The resemblance between the actors in I Play Rocky <\/strong>and their real-life counterparts is uncanny. Ippolito, who played Al Pacino in The Offer, doesn\u2019t just play Stallone; he embodies him. He looks and sounds just like him. I also have to give props to Kiki Seto, Stephan James (Race) and Robert Morgan (The Accountant 2) who play Talia Shire, Carl Weathers and Burgess Meredith respectively. If I didn\u2019t know better, I\u2019d swear they were clones.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Matt Dillon (There\u2019s Something About Mary) shows up as Sly\u2019s dad Frank, a rough sort who dismisses his son as a moron. In the one part of I Play Rocky<\/strong> that I think could have been improved, they don\u2019t have a close relationship. It\u2019s this relationship that shapes one of Rocky\u2019s emotional high points, the scene where he finally confronts trainer Mickey over his treatment of him. Farrelly should have explored this a little more. I definitely would have liked to see more of Dillon. He\u2019s very good as the elder Stallone.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Robb is also very good as Sly\u2019s supportive wife, a tough cookie who both encourages her husband and calls him out when he makes a mistake. She\u2019s right there on the sidelines to support him while he puts everything he\u2019s got into his first lead performance. Jay Duplass (Other Mommy) delivers a dynamo performance as Rocky director John G. Avildsen, a guy who knows how to make a movie quickly and cheaply. He takes a page from book of William \u201cOne Shot\u201d Beaudine. He\u2019s also the one who brings in Steadicam operator Garret Brown played by real life cameraman Michael Fuchs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Letts has some good scenes as an amalgam of several United Artists executives. He\u2019d love nothing more than to see the brazen young actor fail so he can make a movie he thinks might actually succeed. He needs to regain face after turning down The Godfather a few years earlier. Yeah, I\u2019d say that was a colossal screw-up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There is so much I love about I Play Rocky<\/strong>. I love the subject matter, writing, performances and the casting which definitely deserves to win this year\u2019s Oscar for Best Casting. I enjoyed watching the recreations of scenes that have stayed with me over the past 50 years. Farrelly is completely respectful to Rocky and what it means to its fans. He even includes a post-credits clip of Johnny Carson interviewing Stallone on The Tonight Show. He says that the movie\u2019s production would make a great film. It looks like he was right.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Play Rocky (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amazon MGM\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (strong language, brief sexual material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Peter Farrelly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Peter Gamble\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Dave Palmer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sean Porter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 6, 2026 (US, limited)\/November 20, 2026 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, P.J. Byrne, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon, Stephan James, Tracy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"nfd_image_url":"","nfd_onboarding_generated":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/I-Play-Rocky-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C775&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15309"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15318,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15309\/revisions\/15318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}