Anthony Ippolito as Stallone in I Play Rocky [Claire Folger / Amazon]

I PLAY ROCKY
Directed by Peter Farrelly
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆☆

THE news this week from across the pond that the American public have turned their backs on the MAGA project makes this blue-collar feelgood comedy brilliantly timely. It offers a snapshot of a USA that references the nation’s “Dream” rather than its nightmare.

It’s a film with a massive heart and, just like the plot of Sly Stallone’s breakout movie, this is about a working-class lad coming good, beating the odds and making it in a cut-throat business.

We meet struggling New York actor Stallone (Anthony Ippolito), living on Skid Row and failing badly at earning any decent roles at all.

Teetering on the edge of homelessness, he turns to roles in soft porn movies and checking tickets at flea pit cinemas. It’s while working at the flea pit he meets Sarah (AnnaSophia Robb), and the pair fall in love. Their relationship is another wonderful element of this crazily romantic story: you can’t help but swoon at the oodles of charm they both possess and their simple, honest love story that drives Sly forward.

Then the action moves to Los Angeles, where Sly and Sarah have relocated as he tries to make it in Hollywood. An introduction to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff (played with a stereotypical shyster shtick by PJ Byrne and Toby Kebbell, who have created a loveable double act) he sneaks a script into a pile for them to read. They like it, but not enough to green light it: instead they say come back when he has something else.

Sly sits down and writes Rocky in three days flat, and then refuses to sell the script to an ever-increasingly keen studio: he says he has to play the lead or isn’t interested. We follow Sly and Sarah as they stumble through poverty and overcome the odds to get Rocky on the big screen.

The film greatly benefits from the fact it is about a film that has so many seminal moments – it gives the narrative a shape. It draws on instantly recognisable scenes, such as the jogging up the Philly town hall steps, the training in a beef processing freezer, Rocky’s dirty grey tracksuit and Sly’s Italian drawl.

Played with oodles of charm and humour, this is a wholly enjoyable film about Hollywood where every punch lands, a lovely peek behind the stage curtain, packed with warmth, humour and panache.

Rocky is about underdogs fighting to be the champ. I Play Rocky is exactly the same plot.

A knock-out.