‘I Play Rocky’ Blows the Roof Off TIFF! Becomes Best Picture Contender, Critics Sharpen Knives

Peter Farrelly is back in Toronto, and if you know this festival's history you know exactly what that means. Eight years after "Green Book" took the People's Choice Award and bulldozed its way to best picture — a crime scene for many film critics — Farrelly premiered "I Play Rocky" Saturday night at the Princess of Wales.

To say it blew the roof off the place would be an understatement. I don't think I've ever seen a Toronto audience — any festival audience — embrace a movie the way they did last night. The crowd applauded multiple times during the film. Draw your own conclusions about where this is heading, but a best picture contender this might well be.

The story is the one every film fan already half-knows. Stallone was broke when he wrote "Rocky." Sleeping rough. Doing softcore to eat. He sold his dog because he couldn't feed him. Then he handed the studio a script that stunned everybody who read it, and they made him the offer: take the money, walk away, Burt Reynolds plays Rocky. He said no. They kept raising it. Twenty grand, then more, then more, still no, all the way up to 350k. He said no every time, and kept uttering the line "I play Rocky." The whole movie lives in that sentence.

The brisk and funny script is by Peter Gamble, who came out of nowhere — the guy teaches at USC — and Farrelly has called it the best thing he's ever read.

Anthony Ippolito, 27, Long Island, spent roughly two years preparing to play Stallone. A star is born, and I'm not being cute about it. It's an incredibly endearing performance. There are long stretches where you forget he's playing Stallone rather than Balboa. And the ending is not anticlimactic — I won't reveal why, but it ends perfectly.

The trap with a project like this is obvious. Everyone already knows the ending. On paper "I Play Rocky" should be vulnerable. It isn't, and Ippolito is the reason — he sidesteps impersonation entirely and finds something soulful underneath it.

Farrelly has taken his share of criticism over the years, but he's the right fit for this one. The bench is deep: Matt Dillon as Stallone's hardass father, reuniting with his "There's Something About Mary" director, and Stephan James as Carl Weathers. Tracy Letts steals scenes as the puzzled studio exec — why is this homeless man refusing 350k? Raise it! It's also, apparently, the first film ever to put Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown onscreen, which has to count for something.

As a film about making a film it belongs in the conversation — a notch below "Ed Wood," "Day for Night" and "Singin' in the Rain," but in the room with them, somewhere in the corner, which is more than most can manage. I really think Amazon/MGM has their best picture contender here. And yes, the reviews will not all be kind — there are already a few pans (TheWrap, Screen, The Daily Beast). Some critics have not forgotten about "Green Book," and will sharpen the knives for Farrelly again. That's a given, and it's beside the point. The people will love this movie, and it might win the top prize at TIFF next Sunday.