I Play Rocky (2026) - Movie Review

I just realized the irony that I'm wearing an Arnold Schwarzenegger shirt talking about I Play Rocky. The rivalry continues. What is up guys and welcome to my review of I Play Rocky. This is a biopic of Sylvester Stallone in his early days as a struggling actor as he wrote and struggled immensely to get the first film Rocky made. Now this movie has premiered at a couple different film festivals like TIFF and one local here to my area, the SCAD Film Festival, but it is currently in a limited theatrical run. Probably the majority of the... Big cities out there like New York and Atlanta and L.A., but it's going to have a wide release on November 20th. Now, somehow this movie completely floated under my radar for a very long time. I don't know if they were just keeping very quiet about it or I just did not get the memo. But when the first trailer for this came out, I actually thought it was like a bit. I thought it was like an SNL bit or something like that. And then as I continued to watch the trailer, I was like, holy ----, this is a real movie and this looks really ******* good. I'm a massive fan of the Rocky movies, have been most of my life. It is one of my favorite franchises, and Rocky Balboa is one of my favorite movie characters of all time, and that does include the Creed movies. And I really do love the story and the way that it kind of mirrors the story of Rocky, of Sylvester Stallone refusing to take a payoff to let his script go to the movie studios and stood his ground as an unproven, no-name actor to be the lead in Rocky. And the eventual success story that that created, not just for his career, but for the legacy of Rocky Balboa itself. So naturally, this was one of my most anticipated films of the later part of the year. I was super excited whenever it was announced to be the secret screening that I had taken a chance on and rolled the dice on. And I'm here to tell you, this is not only one of my favorite films of the year, but this is easily the movie of 2026 that I can see myself rewatching the most often so far. And really quickly, before I get into the nitty gritty of I Play Rocky one, I am trying to get to two hundred and fifty thousand, a quarter million subscribers by the end of the year. So if you guys enjoy this video, if you want to talk about movies some more with me, please hit that subscribe button so you can help me get to that awesome goal. That'd be a great Christmas present for me. And in the spirit of a story of somebody putting their own thoughts onto paper. There is a book coming out next year called Tales from the Tube. It is an anthology collaboration between me and 22 other YouTubers where we have all written our own original horror short stories. And the Kickstarter campaign only has about two and a half days left. There's been some new perks that Cecil has added to see if some of you guys might be interested in some of those. But nonetheless, if you want to support me, all the other awesome YouTubers, check out what we can do when we put our own creativity and pen to paper. Please check out the link. It'll be down in the video description below, and I appreciate you checking out Tales from the Tube. Starting off with the positives, to me, this was just an absolute comfort film. This was just pure inspiration, heartwarming. I mean, you do have the drama in there and some of the more heartfelt downbeat moments, but just the story of Stallone, whether it's glamorized a little bit for the fictional movie space or not, and him struggling as an actor. And struggling with finances and living on the street, having to sell his dog, all these stories that us Rocky and Stallone fans have heard for years, seeing that dramatized in a way that still tugged on the heartstrings and going all the way through the production of Rocky and all the trials and tribulations that that film production had and all the hurdles and all the blockades that were against Sylvester Stallone, just everybody wanting him to lose only for this to be one of the best success stories of all time. I had a smile on my face from start to finish. There was no point in this movie where I was not absolutely loving what I was watching, enjoying myself. And as soon as the credits rolled, this is one of those experiences that if I was watching it at home, I would have been totally content going back to the beginning and watching the whole movie again. Sometimes when you watch biopics and you're a fan of a band or an artist or an actor or you're just really knowledgeable about a story. Sometimes it can feel a little bit empty because you're basically just going through bullet points of all these stories and all these beats that you already know by heart as a fan. And playing Rocky was one of those rare biographical drama movies where it does have a little bit of that. And for some people, that might be an issue for them if they are really knowledgeable on the Stallone and Rocky story. But for me, they found some really interesting ways. To find some setup in the early acts of the movie that ultimately pays off by the end that does make the biographical nature of the movie feel like a narrative film. It does feel like it has the three-act structure and the payoff and the emotional crescendos by the end of it, and not just following beat. beating through the events that all of us know. You have Stallone's relationship with his first wife and them struggling together and her being his rock. You have his very strained and tumultuous relationship with his father played by Matt Dillon and somebody that just did not believe in him at all and didn't give him any backup or any support whatsoever and where that plays off in the third act. Even his relationship with some of the producers and the the The lead studio exec that did not want him to be the lead and is rooting against him the entire movie, like all of these very admittedly emotionally manipulative little story beats in here all pay off really nicely in the third act, even though you know what's coming, even though you see everything that's going to happen as soon as they introduce it, the way that it is brought to life through the storytelling and through the performances, I just thought it was very, very effective. The whole cast of the movie does a fantastic job, of course, the standout being Anthony Appolito. This is the lead actor that is portraying Sylvester Stallone and then obviously Sylvester Stallone as Rocky as the movie is going through. And, you know, I'll say that there was moments, especially in the first act of the movie, where it felt like maybe he was dialing it up just a little bit too much, where he was going just a bit past Sylvester Stallone into playing. Rocky, the entire movie, but I think that went away pretty quickly. You know, that was a concern that I have when I watched the trailer is, is he going to go just a little too far? Because there is a subtle difference between Sylvester Stallone when he talks and Rocky Balboa. There's much more of a educated and much more of an insightful tone when Stallone is talking about things versus Rocky, who one of the main charms of that character is that he is very simple. So to get that out of the way, yeah, there is a little bit of that. My fears were alleviated very quickly when you start to get into the beats of him writing the screenplay and battling the studio system. And it's like, OK, now Stallone has showed up. But his performance is uncanny. I mean, from the way that he does his voice to just the physical appearance of him, to the way that he nails like the walk and the mannerisms of Stallone. This is one of those performances that is very tricky, a tightrope when you do a biopic where very easily some of these larger than life people. Whether it is Sylvester Stallone or if we ever get an Arnold Schwarzenegger one or Michael Jackson or you can even go to Elvis and very easily you can slip into doing like an impersonation of that person rather than actually becoming them. As a performer and Anthony is one of those people that is able to cross over into giving you a legitimate performance and the supporting cast all does a phenomenal job. Matt Dillon's only in a few scenes, but he is awesome as Stallone's father. You got AnnaSophia Robb playing Sasha, Sylvester Stallone's first wife and their relationship, as I said, is really kind of the heart and soul of the movie for a good chunk of it. Even the two producers here, which. Ironically enough, Stallone absolutely ******* despises now. So I don't know how you felt about the way that it was portrayed. I don't know where the truth lies, but you got PJ Byrne and Toby Kebbell teaming up together as Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff as the two producers that kind of believed in Rocky and really fought for Stallone and fought for this movie to become a reality. And there's a lot of genuine humor that comes out of those sequences, just those two together or those two with Anthony Ippolito. There's genuine laughs throughout this film of some of the ridiculous things that actually happened and some of the situational humor and even just the way that they don't understand the true nature of how like down in the trenches Sylvester Stallone is and he's turning away two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, half a million dollars, and he's parking cars like so there's a lot of great moments in this movie with those three, especially that are. Total crowd-pleasing, laugh-inducing moments. Your whole theater is going to erupt. And even other performances that are, you know, just in a few different scenes. Like you got Stephen James portraying Carl Weathers and he nails it. There's one scene that's been in the trailer where he kind of walks in and is giving his audition, doesn't realize that Sylvester Stallone is the writer and the lead actor and kind of insults him a little bit. But that swagger of early Carl Weathers and Apollo Creed. Absolutely nails it. You have Kiki Sito here as Talia Shire in a few different scenes, and she's pretty uncanny as well. So just the whole cast, whether it is a true character that you're going to be following for a lot of the film and is integral to the story and all the emotional beats of Sylvester Stallone's story in this. Or just an actor kind of standing in for one of the famous characters and actors inside of Rocky and one of the performances I want to call out is Jay Duplass, who plays John G. Albertson. He was the director of the original Rocky, also Rocky five and the Karate Kid. But I thought he was awesome in this, and I just recently saw him in other mommy, which I didn't like at all. Didn't like his character all that much. It was nice to see him come back very soon after that and give not only a great performance, but. The character that he's portraying is very fun. Again, a lot of good humor coming out of this. I mean, this is directed by Peter Farrelly, one of the Farrelly brothers who was like the kings of comedy in the 90s. And he's really shown some good chops at his dramatic stuff. But he lets his comedy talent slip in here with the way that he directs these actors and with the script, of course. But his portrayal of John G. Alvinson, I thought was hilarious because he is. Just so clearly locked in on what he wants this movie to be and get so annoyed to a comedic degree at all of the different little blockades that they have, the certain things the actors lie about to get the job. And he's almost like the underdog in the movie, just as much as Rocky is, because he's given this unwinnable situation. Make this movie with absolutely zero delays without falling behind one single moment in the schedule with an unproven actor who's also the writer and even more passionate about the story. As you are and everybody in the studio, aside from the two producers that have financed this thing, are hoping that you lose. So he was a huge standout. And I really appreciated how the movie was paced as well. I was a little bit concerned that this was going to turn into mostly just like. A dramatization of all the most famous scenes in Rocky. And the movie actually takes its time to get to the production of Rocky. There's a lot of the early struggles of Stallone. There's a whole like second act basically that is entirely dedicated to the studio system and him trying to write the script and then sell the script and not leave it behind where he's trying to bet on himself. So it's really just the third act of the movie that is, you know, recreating some of these sequences and showing how they had to create some of these. Uh, iconic parts of Rocky. And I thought that that was the perfect mix, you know, for as much as I still would probably admittedly enjoy an entire film. That's just a dramatization of the production of Rocky. I think it was important to spend a lot of time in those early beats, uh, to have all the good payoff at the end. So it's a really well-paced movie where just like I said, the whole time I had a smile on my face, I would have sat there for another hour. And I think it's interesting how the story of Sylvester Stallone creating Rocky. Almost feels even more relevant today because we're in a time where at least it feels from a fan perspective and a viewer perspective that so many movies are just made by committee. They're made by algorithms. You know, they're made for who is going to be the most four quadrant bet. And you don't really see stories like a movie like Rocky. anymore. Like this movie would not be made today. We say that for a lot of classic films. And so seeing a story like this, that luckily the filmmakers understand completely that there's like this very almost uncanny synergy between the underdog story of Rocky Balboa as a fictional character and the underdog story of Sylvester Stallone, a real life struggling actor who eventually became one of the biggest stars of the 80s and the 90s. How that story can really cut deep nowadays, where you can look back and you can not only just appreciate the history of film and appreciate the fact that, you know, you've got films like this, you've got these proven classics because of these people that believed in themselves and fought tooth and nail to make this piece of art come to fruition. But nowadays, it feels all the more important to look back at things like this and hope that at some point, despite being a continuously more digital. Society and digital age as far as creativity and of course the rise of AI and all that crazy ---- that's on the horizon. It's all the more important to look at stories like this and think. I really hope that we don't lose that. I really hope that as a humanity, we do not lose the beauty of art and the beauty of artists and the piss and vinegar that it takes to make something that doesn't feel like the sure, easy financial bet and bring it to fruition and prove that as long as it's good and you cut through and you find an audience and you have something that resonates, none of that ---- matters. It doesn't always have to be the superhero movies. Or the 17th Fast and Furious film, you can have a movie about this, you know, simple man from Philadelphia that turns into the biggest symbol of underdogs in sports history and it'll work. So something about that just resonated for me as I was watching it, where it's like you're looking back at the good times and saying, please, God, don't tell me that all of that is over forever. And the last thing that I'll say here, which is going to be an interesting thing to put in the positives, but. Sometimes when you're watching a biopic or any movie, any type of a fictional story brought into the movie format, period, you're always curious like how much of this is true, how much of this is exaggerated, how much of this is absolute bullshit to kind of tell the story that they want to tell. And what I will say to give credit to I Play Rocky is one, it wasn't obvious to me at all what points in this story, no matter how crazy the circumstances can be, might have been Because the entire story... Seems like it's too good to be true. And so if they did hide things, they hid it extremely well. But even more importantly, the second one, I didn't care. I didn't watch this and think to myself, eh, some of this seems like bullshit, or I don't know, that feels like the exaggerated movie Hollywood version. I didn't care, because the story and the characters and the experience of watching this movie It was just so awesome. I'm like, I don't give a ---- if this is 80% true and 20% fluff. It ******* works. When you're seeing things like Stallone breaking his hand during the punching the frozen meat thing and just pushing through it for the sake of getting the scene done. When you're looking at things like him having to run, you know, 60 miles for the first day to get all of the running shots and just destroying his feet on the first. Couple of days of production with still weeks to go. When you look at things like, you know, financial troubles where they're not able to secure enough extras for the ice skating scene. And he decides on the spot, well, let's just walk around and have it be a scene with me and her. Like, I don't know if that actually happened. Some of it might have, some of it might not have, it might've all been bullshit. It might've all been true, but it all worked for the story that they were telling and every single decision in here of what pieces of these stories to tell, which ones to focus on. Only made the experience of I Play Rocky resonate even deeper for me. Moving out of the mix, the only thing that I'll say here really isn't a reflection on the movie, and I already kind of hinted at it. It is a little bit odd as a Stallone and a Rocky fan to watch this movie, and you're looking at the relationship between Stallone and Irwin Winkler, and it's very friendly, and they're like the people that made Stallone the star, and they had full faith in him, and bet all their money and their houses on him and everything, and to have the reality How would he now be that? Stallone hates this guy so much that he wouldn't be in Creed three and will not be a part of this franchise for as long as Irwin Winkler is attached to it. Like it makes it a little bit odd. Again, I don't know where the truth lies. I don't know how much of this is Irwin Winkler is the stereotypical Hollywood producer that fucked over Stallone. I don't know how much of it is Stallone just having sour grapes, even though poetically as fans, it would be nice to see him like own Rocky. You understand how the business works and you, you do sell a certain amount of this to make things happen. And whether that's right or wrong, that's the business it's movie business. You know, it's the, it's, it's the nature of the beast. I don't know where the truth lies, but the fact that that has kind of become the cloud that hangs over the Rocky franchise, that Rocky himself will no longer be a part of it because of his tumultuous relationship with this other guy to have that be such a integral piece to this movie that it works in the film. But kind of toys with your emotions as a fan. Just something to note. And now moving on to the negatives. And this first one is very small. I would even be fine categorizing it as a nitpick because their piece in the movie is extremely minor. I could have used a little bit more of a portrayal of Burt Young or Pauly. Wish that there was a little bit more of him. You really only see him in the dramatization of the ending of Rocky. And I feel like there was just something more to chew on there. And also, he only has like one speaking line in the movie, but the actor that they got to portray, Burgess Meredith, who is Mickey, I didn't think that he nailed the voice at all. You know, Mickey's got this gravel to him. And I just, the one line that he has didn't have that. So that stood out to me a little bit as a Rocky super fan. Again, didn't bug me. It was just in the moment I was like, huh, okay. Moving on. And the only other thing that I'll call out as, again, a very minute negative. If you can't tell, I absolutely love this movie. Like, I almost would not put a negative section here, but they're just a couple little minor things. The note that the movie ends on, I think, is a great note to end the story. And it brings things full circle. I'm not going to talk about specifically, no spoilers, not that, you know, it's a true ******* story. You know the end of it. But... What I will say is I could have used just a little bit more of a payoff with the, you know, the United Artists executive character, the guy that is the one rooting against Sylvester Stallone. You know, he's the guy that is basically the antagonist, if there is one in this movie, because he's rooting for the failure and the recasting of Sylvester Stallone. I wish there was just a little bit more of an emotional payoff between those two characters. What they do is satisfying, and what they do does head in that direction. For many people, it's going to be enough. For me, I would have dialed it up another 10% to 15%, give just a little extra. Whether it is dramatization and Hollywoodizing the story or not, I would have appreciated just that little bit of extra with that character. But overall, guys, this is one of my favorite movies of the entire year. I think if you're a Rocky fan, it is basically a certainty that you're going to enjoy this movie and possibly even love it to the degree that I do. If you're unfamiliar with the franchise or the true life story, maybe your mileage will vary. But to me, especially for the holiday season, this is a perfect movie to go out to with like your dad or your uncle or whoever raised you on the Rocky films. And I thought it was one of the better biopics that we've had in a very long time. And I could see myself popping in this movie and rewatching it alongside the Rocky and Creed movies like I tried to do at least once per year. So as a Rocky fan, very happy. Well, that's it for this one, guys. If you're a Rocky fan as well, please check up here for my most recent Rocky ranking of all the Rocky and the Creed films after Creed 3's release. Also down here is a playlist of all of the new release film reviews that I've done so far this year, of which we're like around 40. Please like, share, hit that subscribe button. Please help me get to a quarter million subscribers. That would be awesome. I greatly appreciate it. And as always, remember, opinions are like assholes, but that doesn't mean you have to be.