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Ringer, The
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by: Ricky Blitt
Directed by: Barry W. Blaustein
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 23, 2005
DVD: May 16, 2006
Running Time: 94 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and some drug references
Starring Johnny Knoxville, Brian Cox, Katherine Heigl, Jed Rees, Bill Chott, Edward Barbanell, Leonard Earl Howze, and Geoffrey Arend
This fearless comedy from producers The Farrelly Brothers asks the question: can a comedy be outlandishly off-the-wall, irreverently indelicate and yet...inspirational? The Ringer spikes the uproarious with the uplifting in a story about an ordinary man who discovers what it truly means to be special when he attempts to "fix" the Special Olympics. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Beyond the Mat
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie surprised me. It treats its disabled characters with affection and respect, it has a plot that uses the Special Olympics instead of misusing them, and it's actually kind of sweet.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The surprise of The Ringer is that the movie is pretty damn funny.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub
The movie's shockingly tasteless setup is also its secret weapon. Despite many scenes in The Ringer that could individually be viewed as politically incorrect, audiences will be laughing with the athletes most of the time.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust
Though the movie bears some of the Farrellys' trademark outrageous humor, it has a sweet demeanor and makes a noble statement.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
If anything, The Ringer doesn't go far enough to exploit its edgy premise, but it does have two conceits that consistently pay off: Knoxville turns out to be a lesser athlete than his competitors, and he's so bad at acting "retarded" that only the unchallenged buy into his ruse.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
These guys are laugh-out-loud funny, not because they're being belittled, but because they're finally getting a chance to show a sense of humor onscreen.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
If the movie were as funny as it is well-meaning, this would be one for the ages.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
It's the supporting characters' combination of smarts and sass, not to mention an honest and positive depiction of the mentally challenged, that turns this potentially crude and heartless comedy into something that the Special Olympics actually endorses.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
No one will accuse The Ringer of being tasteful, but when you're not laughing, you may find yourself genuinely touched.
Read Full Review >Empire Simon Braund
As with "Stuck On You," this is proof that when the Farrellys are involved (even as mere producers), ribald yet humane comedy can be mined from the most potentially offensive sources.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
An odd and not wholly successful little comedy. Its pacing is slack, and although it has a gentle heart, it treads so gingerly across the minefield of potential offensiveness that it sometimes snuffs out its sparks of life as quickly as it throws them off.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Whether Ringer, with its mild comedy and milder messages about inclusiveness and tolerance, will be embraced by Knoxville's hardcore "Jackass" fans remains to be seen. But we can at least trust that the Farrellys will stay the course.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Kate Taylor
The Ringer is a movie whose good intentions shine a lot brighter than its art.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Nathan Lee
At the sweet heart of this silly film is a determination to upend the clichés and assumptions applied to the population we condescendingly label "special."
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Tim Grierson
The movie strains so hard to have its heart in the right place that it never really exploits the guilty-pleasure fun of the premise.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
This wannabe daring comedy about a man who attempts to "fix" the Special Olympics strains for that patented naughty and nice balance with squirmingly squishy results.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Knoxville is functional only when the movie needs a bravura comic performance, but The Ringer is easy enough to take.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
More than predictable. It plods along with the inevitability of a doomed soldier going off to war.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Akiva Gottlieb
An uncomfortable intermingling of message movie and gross-out comedy, a sporadically funny vehicle that indicts its audience for laughing.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Janice Page
Come on. You want to know if it's funny. And the answer is: kind of.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Peter Debruge
Instead of watching a professional actor pretending to be intellectually disabled, we're watching a jackass pretending to be a dimwit pretending to be intellectually disabled.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
A flimsy setup dooms this from the start, though its sheer awfulness is something to see.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
You could make a very funny comedy about a guy who pretends to be retarded so he can win the Special Olympics, but The Ringer isn't it.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Knoxville, Jed Rees and Bill Chott act daffy and more impaired than their counterparts, and that never sat right with me. This may not be the equivalent of acting in blackface, but it's awfully close.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
It's getting harder to sustain a rooting interest in the career of Johnny Knoxville.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
The Ringer is astoundingly craptastic not because the handicapped are handled poorly (though if they were paid more than union scale I'd be surprised), but because it's one of the most singularly unfunny films ever made.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.1 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Bubble Man gave it an8:
It wasn't as good as Benchwarmers IMO because it was like true love, not funny love. But otherwise it was a really good movie with funny jokes through out the whole movie.
Charlie N. gave it a6:
It has a good heart, but it's not very funny.
Robert C. gave it a9:
Clearly this is a film which produces strong reactions. I thought it was jaw droppingly brilliant and funny. I could have done without the sentimental epilogue but the US seems to like that sort of thing and they made it. I thought the girl was a dish - where has she been all my life? Sadly the enormous cinema inLleicester square where I saw it was empty. Pity.
Tyler D. gave it a9:
The Ringer worked surprisingly well. Johnny Knoxville actually makes fun of himself rather than than the handicapped, which I'm sure many of you thought wasn't going to happen. Many of the funny parts come from the handicapped making fun of Knoxville, like the part "When the F*** did we get ice cream!?". The handicapped definitely outsmart the non-handicapped in this laugh-out-loud comedy.
Mark B. gave it an8:
Under normal circumstances, the only person who'd qualify as being equally or more despicable than someone who attempts to rig the Special Olympics is someone who thinks the whole idea is a real gas and tries to make a comedy about it. Well, as those of us who have watched There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hal already know, there's nothing normal about the Farrelly brothers. They have a large number of off-screen friends who are physically and/or mentally challenged (and cast them in nearly all their movies) , they do a lot of spare-time volunteer work for related causes, and in general they work out of not only a deep sense of compassion but also affection for this community. And believe it or not, they and screenwriter Ricky Blitt and director Barry Blaustein actually come up with a farcically plausible premise that makes nice guy Steve's attempt to pull off such an outrageous ruse at least understandable (if definitely not justifiable). It says a lot for the depth of The Ringer's insight into its subject matter that Steve's mentally challenged teammates see through his con almost immediately; they instinctively know he isn't one of them. The dodgiest plot element is that the movie's potential romantic interest (Katherine Heigl), a Special Olympics coach, DOESN'T catch on that Steve is pretending to be what he's not, but this is chalked up to a good-natured naivete on her part that also allows her to be strung along by the traditional Bad Boyfriend. The movie is sweet but not sentimental (at least until the last ten minutes when it's genuinely earned the right to be); it's consistently amusing while pulling off the small miracle of NOT making you feel bad about laughing, and the casting is truly impressive: it's extremely difficult to tell which of the Special Olympians in the film are being played by really good actors pretending to be challenged and which are real-life mentally challenged folks who also really good actors. (I tried to guess a couple of times and was wrong on both counts.) Brian Cox plays Steve's slimy uncle, who concocts the plot, and if I wasn't previously convinced of what a great actor he is, I am now: forget his moving monologue at the end of 25th Hour or that he was the original Hannibal Lector; if his ability to make this sleazebag come across as fairly likable isn't the mark of greatness, nothing is. And as for Johnny Knoxville (The Dukes of Hazzard), let's just say that I'm not normally a fan, to say the least; the close-up of a filled department store commode in Jackass: The Movie pretty much sums up my general opinion of his career--but here he not only makes the difficult masquerade work, but surprisingly turns out to be an engaging, funny and sympathetic leading man. Just one unexpected surprise in a movie that's full of them: The Ringer takes the worst, most tasteless movie premise of 2005 and turns it into one of that year's most entertaining and endearing crowd-pleasers.
Mani T gave it a0:
Was this supposed to be a Comedy or some type of love story? I absolutely did not see anything funny in it.
Connor S. gave it an8:
I saw this movie today, and i thought it was hilarious. the reason why i thought it was a good movie was because it was not pointless. it had a very good plot, and taught a good lesson. i think that it isi definetly worth buying. and also have to add that johnny knoxville is getting quite good at acting. lets just say he was not too great in dukes of hazzard.
