Review: 'I Play Rocky' brings us into a wannabe actor's fight for the role of his life. You know his name

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Set us as preferred If you’re a certain age — say, the generation most excited by the prospect of a “Rocky” origin story — you probably have spent a good few decades watching people imitate Sylvester Stallone.You might be able to pull it off yourself.

Start with the gravely voice that rumbles and mumbles, make your eyes as heavy-lidded as possible, add a swaggering shoulder roll and then just brood, baby, brood.Anthony Ippolito has the moves down pat in “I Play Rocky,” Peter Farrelly’s endearing crowd-pleaser, an underdog story about making the underdog movie that went on to win the Oscar for best picture in 1977.

The title comes from Stallone’s repeated insistence that he portray the working-class fighter in the film that he wrote for himself.The studio wanted a star — Ryan O’Neal or Burt Reynolds, among others — and offered Stallone $360,000 for the script if he would just walk away.

Stallone refused, even though his bank account was down to $106.“I told my wife that I’d rather bury it in the backyard and let the caterpillars play Rocky,” he said shortly before the movie opened.“I would have hated myself for selling out, the way we hate most people for selling out.”And that’s why the new film, written by Peter Gamble, has Ippolito say the title so many times that, by the end, you feel like you’ve gone a full 15 rounds with Apollo Creed and been pummeled into submission.

Movies Ippolito excels as the then-unknown Stallone, who, while broke, parlayed his original screenplay for “Rocky” into a starring role and an acting career.But as you’re watching this breezy movie as it slipstreams its way down memory lane, it starts to feel like Ippolito really is playing Rocky and not Stallone.The difference might be negligible, since “Rocky” was, in many respects, Stallone’s story: a...