The Ringer (2005)

Short and Simple Review by WubsTheFadgerJohnny Knoxville is hilarious. The story is so insensitive towards special needs people that its hilarious. The story is funny but not a comedy that keeps the laughs rolling. I found the film to be a good comedy but not amazing.The acting is good. Johnny Knoxville is great. Katherine Heigl plays the cute girl next door and has such a great attitude about her. Brain Cox also performs great. The pacing is a little slow and the film was a little long.Pros: Johnny Knoxville is hilarious, Katherine Heigl and her hot body, and some funny jokesCons: Slow pacing, an overlong runtime, and the story is not consistently funny Overall Rating: 6.0

As a comedy movie, 'The Ringer' is fairly average. It has a few good laughs, some funny characters and an entertaining plot, but nothing that hasn't already been done before. It's the sort of film you stick on when you need to pass a couple of hours, a film that you can follow without paying any real attention.'The Ringer' won't be for everyone though, Johnny Knoxville's acting as a handicapped person does come across a bit awkward at times, though I guess such a role can't be easy to play. Overall, this is a decent comedy with some likable characters. An easy-to-follow, entertaining story with a few decent laughs.

Steve Barker (Johnny Knoxville) goes to his boss to ask for a promotion. His first job is to fire the janitor Stavi. He can't bring himself to do it and instead hires him to mow his lawn. Stavi accidentally cuts off his finger and Steve needs $28k to get it reattached. His sleazy uncle Gary (Brian Cox) comes up with the idea to fix the Special Olympics. Gary wants him to pose as mentally challenged to beat the pentathlon champ Jimmy Washington. He falls for event organizer Lynn Sheridan (Katherine Heigl).The start is pretty weak with a wishywashy lead character. I don't think Knoxville is particularly good at playing that character. Katherine Heigl is fairly wooden in this. Knoxville pretending to be slow is par for the course for most of his movies. None of these problems mean the end of the world. I actually like the real handicap actors in this. The biggest problem I have are all the actors acting as mentally handicap. It feels demeaning and fake. Unless they are trying to be Dustin Hoffman doing Rain Man, this was never going to work. They are better off simply getting real handicap actors to do the roles. Even if they can't quite say the lines, they could concentrate the acting to the few that seem to do good work. It's kind of insulting. It's uncomfortable. It's not funny. I just keep thinking that Knoxville is suppose to be stupid and funny for faking a mental handicap. Yet there are all these other actors who are actually faking mental handicap and the audience has to take them seriously.

Brian Cox as the unrepentant gambling uncle almost steals the show in THE RINGER, but Johnny Knoxville hops aboard the short bus to success when he agrees to fix the Special Olympics. THE RINGER is often laugh-out-loud hilarious (as when Knoxville discovers that his undercover name will henceforth be "Jeffy Dahmer"), but it's also a nice little love story and- most important of all- a reaffirmation of the Human Spirit. I LOVE the fact that the guys with whom "Jeffy" is rooming not only find him out (when he lets his guard down and "acts different"), but also agree to help him perpetrate his fraud because they can't stand the star of the Special Olympics, Jimmy (who arrives in a limo with a gaggle of publicity people), who is favored to win again this year. On a personal note, I can sympathize with people who might be offended by some of the humor in THE RINGER, but it's actually relatively mild when compared to the kind of hurtful, humiliating humor that one encounters out in The Real World. (With LOVE, this one's for Sissy.)