Title: The Ringer
Genre: Comedy
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Katherine Heigl, Bill Chott …
Director: Barry W. Blaustein
Release: (2005)
Should you ever find yourself in the unlikely situation of having 90 minutes to kill and being forced to choose between popping The Ringer into your DVD player and hitting “Play” or popping your hamster into the microwave and hitting “Beef”, I would strongly recommend you go with the latter. No matter how gruesome the microwave scene may get you’ll probably still get just as many laughs out of it and, in all likelihood, you’ll feel better about yourself in the end than had you chosen to watch The Ringer.
The Ringer pits Johnny Knoxville as life-loser Steve Barker, who finds himself desperate for a quick $28,000 to pay for an emergency reattachment of a co-worker’s severed fingers. As promising as this well-thought out premise may appear, you might be surprised to find out that the plot grows increasingly inane as the story unfolds. In a completely likely and totally believable turn of events, Barker concocts a scheme with his uncle Gary (Brian Cox) to pose as a mentally handicapped athlete and compete in the Special Olympics to win money betting on himself.
By the way did I mention that uncle Gary’s bookie happens to be a big fan of the reigning Special Olympics champion and is willing to take six-figure bets against him and that Barker happens to be both a former high school state champion track star and drama standout? Well they are.
As the games unfold, Barker grapples with his own motivations, learns important lessons about life, makes friends with the athletes he meets, gains a new respect for his handicapped teammates and opponents, falls in love with the beautiful Olympics volunteer, tries to redeem himself, comes clean to everyone, loses the girl, gets the girl back, somehow still wins the money, becomes a better person for it all and lives happily ever after. Thoroughly unpredictable, I mean, real edge-of-your-seat type stuff.
If there is anything worthwhile you might come away from this movie with, it would probably be to learn that when Johnny Knoxville combs his hair down he is practically a dead ringer (pun not entirely unintended) for an enlarged Giovanni Ribisi. Other than that, watching The Ringer is probably pretty much the same as spending an hour and a half with the cheapest, late-night, back-alley hooker you can find: yes, it’s true that you’re likely to get a few, fleeting moments of cheap thrill out of it, but when it’s all over you’ll just end up feeling dirty and really wish you hadn’t done it.
Grading
Story: F
Acting: C -
Visuals: N/A
Originality/Innovation: D
Enjoyability: D
DVD Extras: D
Overall: D
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