I Play Rocky (2026) Review: Ippolito's Stallone — Farrelly's Stallone Biopic Earns 88% on RT, and Critics Agree the Lead Is a Knockout

Peter Farrelly's film about how Sylvester Stallone got Rocky made is a warm crowd-pleaser, and Anthony Ippolito is the reason critics keep coming back to it.

Anthony Ippolito does not so much play Sylvester Stallone as inhabit him, and that is the whole case for Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky. The Amazon MGM Studios film, a PG-13 biographical comedy-drama running 2 hours 8 minutes, arrives at an 88% Tomatometer from 104 reviews and a Metacritic score of 68 from 37. It is the rare awards-season crowd-pleaser that critics mostly forgive for being exactly that.

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What I Play Rocky is about

The setup is the legend every Rocky fan knows, told as a comedy of stubbornness. In the early 1970s Stallone is a struggling New York actor taking softcore work, sleeping rough with his dog Butkus and clashing with his father Frank (Matt Dillon). A job tearing tickets at a movie theater introduces him to Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb), and after a move to Los Angeles he writes Rocky and then refuses to sell it unless he can star. Peter Gamble wrote the screenplay.

The second half is the making of the film. Toby Kebbell and P.J. Byrne play producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler, Tracy Letts plays a fictional studio boss, and Stephan James turns up as Carl Weathers, a scene Amazon MGM has already released as a clip called "Meeting Carl Weathers." Jay Duplass rounds out a deep supporting bench.

The performance carries it

Nearly every review lands on the same point. SlashFilm's Bill Bria, who gave it 7/10, calls Ippolito's work a pitch-perfect impression and "Exhibit A" against digital de-aging and synthetic replacements, and says the first half works incredibly well as an echo of Rocky Balboa's own underdog arc. Farrelly, best known for comedies before Green Book, keeps the tone warm and lets a mid-film screwball set piece breathe.

Where it goes soft

The complaints are just as consistent. Once Rocky gets made, the film becomes what SlashFilm calls "a little bit too much of a fait accompli," and the recreations of famous scenes lean toward fan service. The new songs in the romantic scenes are, in the same review's words, "jarringly treacly." TheWrap went further with the headline "Hollow Crowdpleaser," and the Metacritic spread runs from 100 at the San Francisco Chronicle to 20 at The Times, with The Guardian at a lukewarm 60.

Scores and where to watch

The audience is warmer than the critics: Rotten Tomatoes lists a 98% Popcornmeter, and IMDb sits at 8.0 from 2,232 votes. Metacritic's user score is 8.1, though from only 10 ratings. I Play Rocky is in theaters now; Amazon MGM opened it on November 6, and its $337,500 US gross so far reflects a limited start. A wider rollout has been reported for November 20.

Verdict

This is a film best enjoyed by people who already love Rocky, and for them it is a generous, funny and well-acted tribute. Viewers wanting a harder look at Stallone's ambition will find the edges sanded smooth. We rate it 78 out of 100: ride the first half's energy, forgive the second half's inevitability, and watch Ippolito. If you want something with the same crowd-pleasing streak, see our reviews of Club Kid and Drummer Boy.