I Play Rocky review: Will have you punching the sky with joy like Rocky Balboa himself
This film – which details how Sylvester Stallone came to play his iconic character – is hard not to love.
Amazon MGM/ YouTube
- Terry Staunton
Published: Wednesday, 4 November 2026 at 3:58 pm
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A star rating of 4 out of 5.
It's hard not to love a film that begins with a down-at-heel, aspiring young actor auditioning for the role of "Thug Number Two" and ends with him watching a crowd-pleasing Oscar-winner where he’s both the writer and – crucially – the star.
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Arguably the underdog tale to end all underdog tales, Sylvester Stallone’s incredible trip from parking cars to becoming a serious Hollywood player is the stuff of legend, rooted in the stubborn, single-mindedness of his three-word mantra that gives the film its title.
While his producers bat around tried-and-tested 1970s names like Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood and Ryan O’Neal, the guy who came up with the idea of a nobody boxer getting a shot at the big time is adamant, and no amount of money will make him say otherwise: "I play Rocky."
The story of Stallone battling the movie biz to land the lead role has been told before, in both the 2023 Netflix documentary Sly and the actor’s 2026 autobiography The Steps, but it's perhaps most engaging as a drama, laced with comedy and glorious digs at the very nature of filmmaking, made flesh by top-to-bottom impressive performances.
Starting at the top, Anthony Ippolito is uncanny as Stallone, from the drooped eyes and mumbled speech patterns to the shuffling gait; back in the day, it gave comedy impressionists a lot to play with, to exaggerate, but thankfully Ippolito reins it in for an infinitely more nuanced portrayal.
That’s essential to serve the Everyman spine of the screenplay and its portrait of a blue-collar ordinary Joe with a big heart (he truly loves his dog) fighting against the odds to make his dreams come true.
Those dreams are laid out in viewer-friendly fashion, from Sly meeting his wife Sasha (a splendidly spiky AnnaSophia Robb) when she was his co-worker at a New York cinema, to the couple’s fame-seeking move to Los Angeles, to his lightbulb moment for the script while watching TV coverage of a supposed no-hoper going the 15-rounds distance against the mighty Muhammad Ali.
From there the film expands into a wider account of what it takes to get a movie over the line, with director Peter Farrelly making good use of his long-established knack for comedy to drive home just how unlikely the whole affair is — how truth is routinely stranger than fiction.
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Toby Kebbell and PJ Byrne form a terrific double act as Stallone’s producers, zipping back and forth between the actor and studio boss Sandy Maddox (Tracy Letts) with ever increasing cash offers Sly has no intention of ever accepting unless he gets to act.
The Letts character is a composite, reportedly based on selected traits of real-life Hollywood high-fliers of the era, and he’s an absolute blast, especially his foul-mouthed reactions to having to deal with the upstart out-of-towner who, to all intents and purposes, is holding him to ransom.
Maddox has a trick up his sleeve, though, structuring a contract that, should the production go just one day over schedule, gives him the right to replace Stallone and shut him up for good.
Enter director John Avildsen, renowned for working fast and cheap, with a canny eye for cutting corners – chief among which is setting the action in Philadelphia with a non-union crew, far from the scrutiny of industry heavy-hitters in LA or New York.
It's a decision which, as history tells us, paid extraordinary dividends, allowing Farrelly to give screen time to the original film's iconic sequence of Rocky in training and running up the steps to the city's Museum of Art to the strains of Bill Conti's anthemic theme music.
Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky. Amazon MGM/ YouTube
Jay Duplass warrants a shout-out as the sardonic and straight-talking Avildsen, a maverick with a healthy disdain for the frequently counter-productive cogs of the Hollywood machine, and in a smaller role Stephan James elicits solid laughs as Carl Weathers, cast as Rocky’s opponent in the all-important face-off in the ring.
Hollywood eating itself has often come up trumps; in 2013 Saving Mr Banks was a wonderfully witty, true story of Disney turning children’s book Mary Poppins into magical cinema, while Mank, David Fincher’s 2020 drama about Citizen Kane, received 10 Oscar nominations – one more than the source material.
I Play Rocky is a proud addition to the list, a beautifully assembled and perfectly cast movie that reminds us why the original was so beloved in the first place; it will have you punching the sky with joy like Rocky Balboa himself.
I Play Rocky is released in UK cinemas on Friday 6 November 2026.
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Authors
Terry Staunton
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