Peter Farrelly's 'I Play Rocky' Celebrates the Underdog Story Behind the Underdog

Peter Farrelly's taking his turn at the origin story with I Play Rocky, a crowd-pleaser that retraces the scrappy path that got Rocky from nobody's dream to everybody's movie. Anthony Ippolito plays a young Stallone—pre-fame, pre-legend, just hungry—while AnnaSophia Robb, Jay Duplass, and Matt Dillon round out the cast in what sounds like a straightforward celebration of how a modestly budgeted boxing film became a cultural juggernaut.

There's something fitting about Farrelly—a director who built his whole thing on crowd-pleasing, character-first storytelling—telling this particular story. Rocky wasn't supposed to work. It was made for nothing, by nobodies, and somehow it changed everything. That's the kind of tale that gets people in theaters: the real underdog narrative, not just the movie one.

We're living in an era where every filmmaker wants to make the next Rocky. Might as well learn how the original one actually happened.

Read the full story at The Hollywood Reporter → https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/i-play-rocky-review-anthony-ippolito-sylvester-stallone-1236699723/