Amazon’s New ‘Rocky’ Spin-Off Earns Knockout Reviews After Festival Debut

In 1976, Sylvester Stallone starred in Rocky, where he played down-on-his-luck boxer Rocky Balboa. The movie won the Oscar for Best Picture and made Stallone a star. Even 50 years later, he’s still a headliner, playing the lead role in the extremely popular crime drama Tulsa King. And it all started with a humble sports movie he wrote himself.

I Play Rocky is an upcoming biopic that goes behind the scenes of Rocky, starring Anthony Ippolito as a young Sylvester Stallone. Reviews are now in, and the movie is proving divisive. It currently has a 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s fresh, but only just.

Critics seem to either love or hate the film. On the love side, multiple critics say it’s among the best movies they’ve seen all year, including Scott Menzel of Awards Buzz. “It is an irresistible retelling of one of Hollywood’s most iconic underdog stories destined to follow in Rocky’s footsteps,” Menzel writes. “I absolutely loved it.” Alfred Castaneda of Shade Studios is similarly enthusiastic, writing:

I Play Rocky is simply sensational. It matches the heart and grit of the original film, with a leading performance so good it’s like we’re seeing Stallone himself, from the past.

But other critics seem to have had the exact opposite reaction, with several slamming the movie for being uninspired. “I Play Rocky lacks the passion this story requires, hitting the beats but missing the heart,” writes Chase Hutchinson for TheWrap. “The narrative comes across as tiresome more than compelling, and the film consistently makes you wish you were just watching Rocky instead.” Robert Daniels of Screen Daily was also unimpressed: “A walking piece of pastiche, the uninventive crowd pleaser takes its best cues from Rocky, recreating memorable scenes with little of the movie’s original humanism,” he writes.

There are some areas of agreement. Even the critics who don’t like the movie overall praise Anthony Ippolito’s lead performance, although Nick Schager of The Daily Beast does so almost begrudgingly. “Doing a passable Stallone impression, Ippolito doesn’t treat his character as a joke,” he writes. “Everyone else, however, acts a fool, led by Tracy Letts as fictional studio boss Sandy Maddox, who rants and raves like a cartoon clown and, in the process, undermines any semblance of reality.” On the other side, Travis Hopson of Punch Drunk Comics was so taken with the lead performance he predicts it could “do for star Anthony Ippolito’s career what Rocky did for Sylvester Stallone.”

Even several of the critics who didn’t like the movie acknowledge that it is a “crowd-pleaser.” The difference seems to be between those who got swept up in the emotional energy and those who felt manipulated. J. Don Birnam of Next Best Picture wrote one of the few middle-of-the-road reviews, neither ecstatic with praise nor dripping with contempt. “I Play Rocky never reaches the grandiose moment that propelled the film it chronicles, but it has enough heart, sufficient laughs, and a highly entertaining performance by Tracy Letts to be worth your while,” he writes.

I Play Rocky is helmed by Peter Farrelly, who directed the 2019 Best Picture winner Green Book, another divisive film. It opens in theaters on November 6, 2026. I Play Rocky also stars AnnaSophia Robb, P.J. Byrne, Toby Kebbell, Matt Dillon, Stephan James, and Jay Duplass.