TORONTO — Who could have predicted that Peter Farrelly would make the fan favorite of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival? Everyone who voted for “Green Book” eight years ago.
Even at the time, “Green Book” got justly mocked as a feel-good flick that already felt out of touch, the second coming of “Driving Miss Daisy.” Yet, Farrelly loves an underdog story — directing and living them — and so, apparently, do TIFF audiences. “I Play Rocky,” his latest, tells the tale of Sylvester Stallone’s struggle to write and star in his breakthrough hit “Rocky,” a slog that starts with him as a homeless actor who can’t even get cast as Thug No. 2 and ends with him onstage at the Oscars as his passion project wins best picture.
An inspirational movie about an inspirational movie, “I Play Rocky” lands almost every punch. Sausaging his muscles into tight turtlenecks, actor Anthony Ippolito plays Stallone as an earnest, charming caricature. “I know I don’t look like Einstein,” the lovable lug grumbles to producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff (P. J. Byrne and Toby Kebbell). But even though Stallone’s first wife (AnnaSophia Robb) is pregnant and he’s just pawned his dog for $40, he’s not selling them his “Rocky” script unless he gets to play the hero.
Farrelly presents Hollywood as cluelessly beholden to the common wisdom that boxing movies with unknown leads don’t sell — until “Rocky” becomes the top money-maker of 1976. The crowd at “I Play Rocky’s” 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 “Rocky’s” triumph 50 years ago.
Fittingly for an industry that often feels on the ropes, one major theme of this year’s festival was: Make art or die. “Elsinore,” from director Simon Stone, stars Andrew Scott as British actor Ian Charleson, who was diagnosed with HIV five years after his breakthrough role in “Chariots of Fire.” The disease will take him soon. But before it does, he’s determined to play the lead in the National Theater’s production of “Hamlet,” despite the warning of his doctor (Olivia Coleman) that months of sword-fighting, scenery-chewing and bellowing to the rafters will shorten the little time he has left.
Sounds noble (and depressing). But Stone wants to celebrate Charleson’s life, not his death. Scott tears into the Bard’s lines — his Hamlet is terrific — and the spotlight is more on his sense of humor than his pain. (Scott’s Charleson would joke that the thing that would really kill him is another fan humming “Chariots’ ” ubiquitous Vangelis theme.) Last year, Scott deserved a best supporting actor nod for his portrayal of songwriter Richard Rodgers in Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” though the nomination never came. This role could reverse that wrong.
Meanwhile, in “Closing Night,” Sarah Paulson also struts and frets upon the stage as Broadway star Sandra Vale, who collapses during her first performance of “Mother Courage.” This gutsy, solitary woman has dedicated her life to her career. Now, everything she’s built has suddenly turned into a house of cards. Worse, her estranged sister April (Naomi Watts), a drama queen, and hostile mother, Diane (Dianne Wiest), fly in from their Michigan hair salon to add to Sandra’s suffering.
Director Cody Fern, who played the Antichrist on “American Horror Story,” is a first-time feature maker working from a script he cowrote with Devon Bostick, another young male actor. Yet the screaming scenes they’ve 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’ll see yours. (If so, my condolences.)
Chris Rock’s “Misty Green” 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), who once won an Emmy but now is a week away from losing her beachfront apartment and having to move to the Valley — which, to her, is worse than being run out of town.
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’s ex-fling Jordan, a director who could gift Misty a dream job on “Dreamgirls” but probably shouldn’t. At least not while she’s still addicted to coke-fueled threesomes with a party guy named Zach (Adam Driver) who claims that Misty can make $200,000 if she’ll hop on his private jet to Dubai.
I’m 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’s “Slow Horses” is climbing her way onto the A-list.
How about one more crowd-pleaser as a treat? My favorite film at this year’s TIFF had to be Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut,” 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’t sing, dance or act, but miraculously, her director (Paul Giamatti) pulls the diva out of her — then tries to shove it back in.
Frankly, the play they’re staging is no “Hamlet.” Eisenberg excels at both smart and stupid comedy, folding a cornball musical called “Nosy Neighbors” into his kinetic script. Moore, as ever, can do anything: fumble lines, walk stiffly and give her all in every scene. It’s possible that several of this year’s awards contenders will be good actors playing good actors. I’d love to see Moore get nominated for playing a bad one.
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