Before Rocky became an endless franchise of training montages, it was a script written in three days by a broke actor with a partial facial paralysis who couldn't get cast in anything better than background roles. I Play Rocky dramatizes the real Hollywood legend: studios loved the script and offered Sylvester Stallone hundreds of thousands of dollars to walk away so they could cast a bankable 1970s star like Burt Reynolds or Ryan O'Neal. Stallone refused to sell unless he played Balboa.

With an 85% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.8 on IMDb, the movie works because the behind-the-scenes stakes match the movie it's about. It's a talking-in-rooms drama rather than a boxing movie, so don't put it on for an 8-year-old expecting ring action. For teens and adults, though, it's a sharp, crowd-pleasing biopic about creative ownership and betting on yourself when your bank account says you shouldn't.