Anthony Ippolito's Stallone Turn Splits Critics At Toronto

Two reviews, one Toronto premiere, and almost no agreement between them. That's where "I Play Rocky" stands after its festival bow, a film that tells the story of how Sylvester Stallone wrote, sold and starred in "Rocky" nearly 50 years ago.

The film, directed by Peter Farrelly from a script by Peter Gamble, opens with Stallone broke in a Times Square flophouse in 1974, auditioning for parts as nameless thugs and adopting a stray pug because he can't afford much else. It follows him to Los Angeles with his soon-to-be wife Sasha, through a parking-lot job, and eventually to March 1975, when a televised fight between Muhammad Ali and underdog challenger Chuck Wepner supposedly lights the spark for "Rocky." Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff love the script. Studio suit Sandy Maddox offers real money for it. Stallone won't sell unless he gets to play the lead himself, and that refusal, repeated at increasingly large sums, becomes the engine of the film's second act.

Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone, and it's his performance that both critics single out first, though they land in different places. Variety's review calls Ippolito's channeling of Stallone's voice and look "a miraculous act of channeling," praising the low growl and unhurried delivery that make the impersonation feel like more than mimicry. Variety went as far as comparing the film's spirit to Richard Linklater's "Nouvelle Vague" from last year, another making-of movie that found meaning in how its subject actually worked.