50 years ago, Hollywood was finishing up one of its more notable movie years, in an already-impressive decade. Enduring 1976 movies include a generational Martin Scorsese classic (Taxi Driver); major works about the news media in both triumph and shame (All the President’s Men; Network); a now-classic western (The Outlaw Josey Wales) and a popular, enduring broad comedy (The Bad News Bears); plus impressive genre films from masters like Brian De Palma (Carrie) and John Carpenter (Assault on Precinct 13), to name a few. Yet no one, within the industry or otherwise, seemed to expect what would become the biggest-grossing 1976 release as well as its underdog Best Picture champion: Rocky, a street-level character study crossed with a feel-good sports movie, starring and written by the relatively unfamiliar Sylvester Stallone.

Stallone bet on himself by insisting on starring in the film, even when faced with offers to take a solid payday for his script and maybe walk away with a producer credit, too. He wanted to act, and he wrote the part of Rocky Balboa for himself; he may not have been palooka with a background in loan-sharking, but he surely identified with the way his character’s talents are continually underestimated. Though it’s not remotely a straight autobiography, the story of Rocky essentially is the story of Sylvester Stallone.

Why, then, would anyone need that story told again, with a smarmier “based on a true story” fabulism replacing the fuller liberties of fiction? That’s the question accidentally posed by I Play Rocky, which wants to be an underdog story about an underdog story about an underdog story. That may be at least one underdog too many in the fight. 

By its nature, I Play Rocky offers an engaging story. Stallone, beneath his bluster and ego, is at his core a likable guy, and Anthony Ippolito plays him that way, even if he leans far heavier on the mumbly, aw-shucks Balboa mannerisms than the arguably more complicated and ambitious patter of the real Stallone. The movie joins the future superstar on the margins, where he’s struggling to make ends meet as an actor, losing menial jobs so he can audition for parts he doesn’t get. His closest brushes with the movies feel peripheral from all angles: glorified extras work (in Woody Allen’s Bananas, though that’s not mentioned directly), a softcore porn film (he balks at an offer to move into the harder stuff), and ripping tickets at a local movie house, where he meets Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb), eventually his girlfriend and then wife.

Sasha encourages “Mike” Stallone to go by his real name, Sylvester, and to keep working on his screenplays. The titles of several later Sly projects are glimpsed before he sits down to scribble out Rocky, inspired by real-life boxer Chuck Wepner, who lasts longer than anyone expects in the ring with Muhammed Ali. Producers Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell) and Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) want to buy the finished script, but balk at Stallone’s insistence on starring, as does composite studio exec Sandy Maddox (Tracy Letts), who authorizes increasing amounts of money to bride him away from this fixation. Eventually, the producers relent and allow Stallone to star. Because of this, however, the movie must be made on a tight schedule and a relative shoestring.

Obviously there’s more to any given movie than a quick description of its plot. On the other hand, I’m not sure there’s much more to I Play Rocky. What little change the on-screen Stallone goes through happens early on, as he learns to believe in himself more firmly; it’s not exactly a dynamic arc. The movie shoot has its share of fun-anecdote foibles, and some challenges for Sly in his first leading role, but wondering whether Rocky will come together doesn’t inspire much nailbiting, even temporarily. The movie can scarcely pretend otherwise, either; director Peter Farrelly often feels like he’s stringing the conflict along, which may be why the ending, despite its obvious triumph, also feels abrupt. Farrelly and screenwriter Peter Gamble simply run out of anecdotes. Farrelly’s Oscar-winning Green Book was kind of a crock, but its character arcs were at least well-timed and synced up.

Remarkably, I Play Rocky has been sold as a similar awards contender — possibly as a trap to prove once and for all that the Academy can baited into loving anything that venerates the craft of moviemaking. The problem here is that I Play Rocky doesn’t have much interest in actual craft; instead, it has a literal-minded conception of Stallone drawing from his life, right down to the emotional monologue he adds to a scene late in the shoot to boost the movie’s emotional core. The fun parts of the movie are watching irascible figures like the fictional Maddox or the director John G. Avildsen (Jay Duplass) react with cranky disbelief over what they’re up against when dealing with Stallone’s stubborn resilience. The movie uses these moments to downplay the fact that they’re all essentially on the same side. Once the movie starts to shoot, the urgency over whether it will be allowed to be completed isn’t exactly off the charts.

It’s tempting to call I Play Rocky a movie that should have been a streaming novelty. Honestly, though, its bones feel dated to an earlier era; it’s more like a second-tier made-for-HBO movie from 1996, with the best Stallone soundalike cable money can buy (which is to say, Ippolito doesn’t always sound quite right; besides leaning more Balboa than Stallone, he puts a little too much Vin Diesel-y gravel into it). That’s not necessarily a shameful designation. A lot of HBO TV movies from the ’90s are better than plenty of Netflix originals, and I Play Rocky is a cut or two above streaming-grade slop. The idea that it might be a worthwhile theatrical experience, though, doesn’t quite track — not when Rocky itself is coming back to theaters for a 50th anniversary re-release, not when the Creed series revitalized that saga over the past decade, and not when Stallone himself just published a memoir about his life and career.

Do we really need the co-director of The Three Stooges to recapture the mystique of Rocky, or explain the psychology of Sylvester Stallone? Even if we do, I Play Rocky doesn’t really bother to do it. It’s a behind-the-scenes biopic composed mainly of shadowboxing.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.