{"id":619383,"date":"2026-09-17T23:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619383\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:02:10","slug":"toronto-finds-its-underdogs-in-i-play-rocky-elsinore-the-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619383\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto finds its underdogs in ‘I Play Rocky, ‘Elsinore,’ ‘The Debut’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TORONTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Who could have predicted that Peter Farrelly would make the fan favorite of this year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival? Everyone who voted for \u201cGreen Book\u201d<\/a> eight years ago.<\/p>\n

Even at the time, \u201cGreen Book\u201d got justly mocked as a feel-good flick that already felt out of touch<\/a>, the second coming of \u201cDriving Miss Daisy.\u201d<\/a> Yet, Farrelly loves an underdog story \u2014 directing and living them \u2014 and so, apparently, do TIFF audiences. \u201cI Play Rocky,\u201d his latest, tells the tale of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s<\/a> struggle to write and star in his breakthrough hit \u201cRocky,\u201d<\/a> a slog that starts with him as a homeless actor who can\u2019t even get cast as Thug No. 2 and ends with him onstage at the Oscars as his passion project wins best picture.<\/p>\n

An inspirational movie about an inspirational movie, \u201cI Play Rocky\u201d lands almost every punch. Sausaging his muscles into tight turtlenecks, actor Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone as an earnest, charming caricature. \u201cI know I don\u2019t look like Einstein,\u201d the lovable lug grumbles to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff (P. J. Byrne<\/a> and Toby Kebbell<\/a>). But even though Stallone\u2019s first wife (AnnaSophia Robb<\/a>) is pregnant and he\u2019s just pawned his dog for $40, he\u2019s not selling them his \u201cRocky\u201d script unless he gets to play the hero.<\/p>\n

Farrelly presents Hollywood as cluelessly beholden to the common wisdom that boxing movies with unknown leads don\u2019t sell \u2014 until \u201cRocky\u201d becomes the top money-maker of 1976. The crowd at \u201cI Play Rocky\u2019s\u201d world premiere in the Princess of Wales theater belly-laughed at every step Stallone had to hurdle to prove his instincts were right. People in the film business also chuckled in recognition as Hollywood still rarely takes shots on new faces, even after \u201cRocky\u2019s\u201d triumph 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

Fittingly for an industry that often feels on the ropes, one major theme of this year\u2019s festival was: Make art or die. \u201cElsinore,\u201d from director Simon Stone, stars Andrew Scott<\/a> as British actor Ian Charleson,<\/a> who was diagnosed with HIV five years after his breakthrough role in \u201cChariots of Fire.\u201d The disease will take him soon. But before it does, he\u2019s determined to play the lead in the National Theater\u2019s production of \u201cHamlet,\u201d despite the warning of his doctor (Olivia Coleman<\/a>) that months of sword-fighting, scenery-chewing and bellowing to the rafters will shorten the little time he has left.<\/p>\n

Sounds noble (and depressing). But Stone wants to celebrate Charleson\u2019s life, not his death. Scott tears into the Bard\u2019s lines \u2014 his Hamlet is terrific \u2014 and the spotlight is more on his sense of humor than his pain. (Scott\u2019s Charleson would joke that the thing that would really kill him is another fan humming \u201cChariots\u2019 \u201d ubiquitous Vangelis<\/a> theme.) Last year, Scott deserved a best supporting actor nod for his portrayal of songwriter Richard Rodgers in Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d<\/a> though the nomination never came. This role could reverse that wrong.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in \u201cClosing Night,\u201d<\/a> Sarah Paulson<\/a> also struts and frets upon the stage as Broadway star Sandra Vale, who collapses during her first performance of \u201cMother Courage.\u201d This gutsy, solitary woman has dedicated her life to her career. Now, everything she\u2019s built has suddenly turned into a house of cards. Worse, her estranged sister April (Naomi Watts<\/a>), a drama queen, and hostile mother, Diane (Dianne Wiest<\/a>), fly in from their Michigan hair salon to add to Sandra\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n

Director Cody Fern, who played the Antichrist on \u201cAmerican Horror Story,\u201d is a first-time feature maker working from a script he cowrote with Devon Bostick, another young male actor. Yet the screaming scenes they\u2019ve written for their marvelous grande dames feel fair and true, even if the middle stretch topples over into tonally discordant shenanigans. I saw my own family in the film. Maybe you\u2019ll see yours. (If so, my condolences.)<\/p>\n

Chris Rock\u2019s<\/a> \u201cMisty Green\u201d comes on overbearing with a Los Angeles montage that smacks the audience with shots of Birkin bags and sidewalk tents. The idea is that, in Hollywood, success and starvation are neighbors, particularly for former star Misty Green (a fantastic Rosalind Eleazar<\/a>), who once won an Emmy but now is a week away from losing her beachfront apartment and having to move to the Valley \u2014 which, to her, is worse than being run out of town.<\/p>\n

Misty has talent. She also has a temper and long list of enemies who, honestly, are right to think hiring her comes with too much trouble. Rock flirts with turning the film into a romantic comedy, showing up as Misty\u2019s ex-fling Jordan, a director who could gift Misty a dream job on \u201cDreamgirls\u201d but probably shouldn\u2019t. At least not while she\u2019s still addicted to coke-fueled threesomes with a party guy named Zach (Adam Driver<\/a>) who claims that Misty can make $200,000 if she\u2019ll hop on his private jet to Dubai.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m torn between whether the point of this enjoyable cringe exercise is too obvious or totally lost. Yet, while Misty may be a lost cause, Eleazar of TV\u2019s \u201cSlow Horses\u201d is climbing her way onto the A-list.<\/p>\n

How about one more crowd-pleaser as a treat? My favorite film at this year\u2019s TIFF had to be Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s<\/a> \u201cThe Debut,\u201d<\/a> an uproarious satire about an invisible housewife who hurls herself into a local community theater musical in order to feel seen. Julianne Moore is Mona, a married mother of two forever apologizing for her own existence. She can\u2019t sing, dance or act, but miraculously, her director (Paul Giamatti<\/a>) pulls the diva out of her \u2014 then tries to shove it back in.<\/p>\n

Frankly, the play they\u2019re staging is no \u201cHamlet.\u201d Eisenberg excels at both smart and stupid comedy, folding a cornball musical called \u201cNosy Neighbors\u201d into his kinetic script. Moore, as ever, can do anything: fumble lines, walk stiffly and give her all in every scene. It\u2019s possible that several of this year\u2019s awards contenders will be good actors playing good actors. I\u2019d love to see Moore get nominated for playing a bad one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Who could have predicted that Peter Farrelly would make the fan favorite of this year\u2019s Toronto International Film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96622,280078,179262,146,878,106948,2085,85,280077,46,27652,280076,397,187271,734,20372,21044,91263,1661],"class_list":["post-619383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-andrew-scott","tag-charleson","tag-chris-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-hamlet","tag-hollywood","tag-il","tag-inspirational-movie","tag-israel","tag-julianne-moore","tag-misty","tag-movies","tag-peter-farrelly","tag-rocky","tag-script","tag-shot","tag-stallone","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}