The Ringer (2005)

There's a line in Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr.'s character lays down a rule so blunt it becomes its own kind of comedy: "You never go full retard." It's a joke that works precisely because it's skewering Hollywood's cynical habit of using disability as a shortcut to awards glory. What's grimly funny is that The Ringer, released the same decade, seems to have missed the memo entirely. Not just missed it. Binned it, stamped on it, and built a whole film on the opposite principle.

The premise alone should have set alarm bells ringing for everyone involved. Johnny Knoxville plays a bloke who fakes an intellectual disability to rig the Special Olympics. That's the pitch. That's what got greenlit. And the film doesn't treat this as a dark, uncomfortable idea worth interrogating. It treats it as a comic goldmine. The humour leans almost entirely on mimicking speech patterns, behaviours and mannerisms associated with intellectual disabilities, and expecting you to laugh at them. There's no satirical distance. There's no real subversion. It's just the jokes, sitting there, grinning at you.

I know the standard defence. The filmmakers worked with Special Olympics athletes. The organisation gave it their blessing. The film, in theory, is meant to celebrate these people rather than mock them. Fine. I'll grant all of that. But good intentions and a kind word at the end don't undo eighty minutes of the audience being invited to laugh at people. You can't build your entire comedic architecture on disability stereotypes and then expect a redemptive third act to wash your hands clean. It doesn't work like that. The maths just doesn't add up.

And here's the thing: even setting aside the moral problems, it's not funny. Knoxville has genuine chaotic energy when he's working with the right material. I've seen what he can do when a project leans into his particular brand of gleeful self-destruction, and this isn't it. His usual charm is completely buried here under a lazy script and gags that have no timing, no surprise, no bite. The tone lurches around frantically between slapstick and something trying to be genuinely heartwarming, and it lands nowhere. Part slapstick, part fake-inspiration, all awkward. The moment a character says something like "I'm not supposed to win!" the film seems to think it's earned something. It hasn't.

There's a version of this story that could have been interesting. A genuinely sharp comedy about the cynicism of people who underestimate disabled athletes, told from the athletes' point of view, could have been something. But The Ringer isn't interested in that. It's interested in Knoxville pulling faces, and in gags that felt outdated even at the time of release. Watching it now, it feels like a document of exactly the kind of comedy that needed to die. I've sat through some rough mid-2000s comedies, including Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013), which at least has a scrappy energy and some genuine laughs buried in the chaos. This has neither the laughs nor the energy to excuse itself.

Offensive, outdated, and almost impressively unfunny. The technical craft is fine, I suppose. The camera points at things. Scenes begin and end. But the failure here isn't really a filmmaking failure. It's a failure of judgement, of nerve, of basic comic intelligence. One and a half stars, and that's being generous to a film that doesn't deserve generosity.

Rating: ★½  | Year: 2005  | Watched: 2025-09-18

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Barry W. Blaustein: Beyond the Mat (1999)
More with Johnny Knoxville: Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013) · Skiptrace (2016) · The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) · Walking Tall (2004)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)