Awesome Movie Review: The Ringer

At the risk of stating the obvious, I’d like to state the obvious point that The Ringer shares a similar plot to the “Up The Down Steroid” episode of South Park. Now South Park can bust out episodes pretty quickly (Do you remember where you were when you realized just how quickly they tossed in an Elian Gonzales reference?), so I don’t know which went into production first. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The South Park episode came out first, and it set the standard upon which all comedies based on regular people posing as the mentally handicapped to win the Special Olympics must be judged. And really, there’s not much similarity between The Ringer and “Up The Down Steroid.” Both use the fixing the Special Olympics as a starting point for something entirely different. The South Park episode was a moralistic indictment of steroid abuse, with the Cartman-as-retard subplot giving us a nice break to laugh at Cartman’s hubris. Nothing makes me quite like some quality hubris. In The Ringer Johnny Knoxville’s attempt to pass as Special Olympics athlete is just the starting point for a typical “Type A” movie.

Have I proposed by Movie Types Theory on this blog? I might have, but it probably accidentally deleted it. Basically, Type A movies are movies where the character is thrown into a situation where he is surrounded by people he thinks are different than himself. Eventually though, he learns that they’re not so very different and gains a new outlook on life. Type B movies are movies where a character goes on a journey, where oftentimes he meets people who help him gain a new outlook on life. Type C movies are movies where people fart a lot and shit blows up. That’s my Movie Types Theory. It applies only to mediocre movies. By definition, a truly great movie should transcend categorization into one of the three types.

Okay, enough lite-minded theorizing. Back to the Awesome Movie Review. The Ringer is a Type A movie. It might seem at first that it’s going to be a tasteless and offensive Type C movie, but before it’s halfway over, the Type A nature of the film becomes abundantly clear. You see, The Ringer isn’t so much about Johnny Knoxville winning the Special Olympics so that he can get the money to sew a friend’s fingers back on, it’s about Johnny Knoxville breaking free from his mind-numbing and restrictive cubicle life and learning how to live and love again. And who helps him embark on this incredible journey of maturation and self-actualization? The retards, naturally.

The moral of The Ringer is that retards are just like the rest of us. They laugh at stupid jokes, they cry during Dirty Dancing and they hate rich, successful Black people. When the retards find out that Johnny Knoxville is faking it, do they shun him? No. They welcome him with their open, stubby little arms and encourage him to continue on his quest. Why? Because they want him to beat Jimmy, the rich, successful Black athlete who has dominated the past six Special Olympics. Like I said, retards hate rich and successful Black people, just like the rest of us. The retards help Johnny Knoxville train and, in the process, he learns to appreciate them as friends.

Naturally, Johnny Knoxville eventually comes clean, admitting his guilt in front of all the Special Olympics participants. It’s pretty predictable, really. You know what’s not predictable? The career choices of Brian Cox. He’s in The Ringer, playing the man who comes up with the whole scheme. But take a look at his IMDb bio. The dude’s all over the place. Sometimes he’s playing Lear, Titus Andronicus, Hannibal Lecter or that dude from Super Troopers. But then he goes off and takes bit parts in The Ringer, narrates Lost clip shows and shits all over the works of Virgil, Homer and Aeschylus in Troy. I don’t get how this guy works. It really fucking bothers me for some reason. He’s a good actor, but how can someone go from playing Lear as a member of the RSC to narrating a made-for-TV smallpox scaremonger? It just doesn’t make sense. But I suppose I should give the guy some credit for playing cartoon Macbeth.

Speaking of cartoon Macbeth, I suppose I should mention the Shakespearean in magnitude finale of The Ringer. How’s that for a segue? Not very good? Well, screw you then. Let’s see you come up with a better transition from a brief discussion of the random career path of Brian Cox to an even briefer discussion the very special production of The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Yup, that’s how The Ringer ends, with Johnny Knoxville putting his acting talent to good use directing an all-retard production of Shakespeare. But instead of dual suicides, Knoxville’s production ends with a musical number. Not exactly my interpretation of the Bard’s work, but then again, I think Hamlet should be a pirate porno, so who am I to judge?

Despite it’s wannabe offensive premise, The Ringer is a harmless movie. There’s nothing really offensive or mean about it. At the same time, there’s nothing as funny as an angry, steroid-addicted paraplegic physically abusing his girlfriend. However, The Ringer does feature Katherine Heigel, a very sexy lady. And I suppose the real moral of The Ringer could be that, even if you’re an ugly man pretending to be a retard and you base a relationship with a sexy lady entirely upon lies and deceit, all you have to do is wait six months and the sexy lady will forgive you and totally make out with you. Ironically, that’s also the moral of Jane Eyre. Actually, that’s not very ironic. Nor is it the moral of Jane Eyre. The moral of Jane Eyre is that the dickhead rich asshole always gets the girl, even if he gets mutilated in a fire started by his abused wife. God, I fucking hate Jane Eyre.

The Ringer is by no means a good movie. In fact, it’s horrible. But it has a very sexy lady, and it made me reflect upon both the career of Brian Cox and my hatred of Jane Eyre. That’s gotta be worth something. After all, what is the purpose of Art if not to showcase sexy ladies and provoke tangentially related thoughts? On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give The Ringer one tiny head of Sergei Eisenstein.