Review: ‘I Play Rocky’ is no knockout, but Anthony Ippolito packs a punch

💌 Love Philly? So do we. Let’s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. Sylvester Stallone had one request for Peter Farrelly when the director set out to make a movie about making “Rocky”: He wanted an unknown to play him. Farrelly did just that, casting Anthony Ippolito as Stallone in this 128-minute film from Amazon MGM Studios — and Ippolito delivers a performance that will no doubt land him in best actor conversations at the 2026 Academy Awards. Ippolito, whose only really notable role prior to playing Stallone in “I Play Rocky,” is that of a young Al Pacino in “The Offer,” an HBO limited series about the making of “The Godfather,” but Ippolito crushes it as Stallone. Before my interview with Ippolito, I had to look up whether he wore a prosthetic to make him look more like Rocky — he did not, yet he manages to truly become Stallone in this film. It’s as if Amazon, in all its wealth, engineered someone to play Stallone. Coming out of the theater, yo