I Play Rocky: The New Trailer Makes a Young Stallone Look Like the Underdog He Wrote About

Photo: Zakarie Faibis, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The second trailer for I Play Rocky arrived on October 22 and it is a better sell than the first. The film is about a broke Sylvester Stallone in the mid-seventies writing the Rocky script in a few days and then refusing to sell it unless he gets to star. Anthony Ippolito plays him, and from the trailer he has the slur and the sag of the shoulders down without tipping into impression. Peter Farrelly directs, which after Green Book makes sense. He likes a man who will not be told no.

The supporting cast is deeper than I expected. AnnaSophia Robb, Matt Dillon, Jay Duplass, Tracy Letts, and Stephan James as Carl Weathers, which is casting I would pay for on its own. Amazon MGM is opening it in select cinemas on November 6 and going wide on November 20, which is the usual sign that someone thinks there is an awards conversation to be had.

I am a soft touch for films about making films, and this story has the advantage of being true and already shaped like a movie. The risk is that it becomes a two-hour tribute. The trailer suggests it has a bit more bite than that. Will you see it, or is one Rocky origin story enough?