91Èȱ¬

You know when a film is so bad, it becomes good? Hearing the premise of Barry W Blaustein's The Ringer, you'd hope that would apply here. No such luck. Johnny Knoxville plays an office nobody who fakes a mental handicap in order to enter the Special Olympics, bet on himself, and win. It's the kind of taboo-busting typical of the Farrelly brothers (the producers here). But ultimately this movie is too busy ramming home a feel-good moral-of-the-story to bother being funny.

Only Knoxville's likeability and his undeniable talent for physical comedy go some way to saving the day. When we join our protagonist Steve (Knoxville), the paper shuffler is in desperate need of $28,000 to pay for an operation on his gardener, Stavi, (Luis Avalos) who Steve employed without first arranging medical insurance. Sniffing an opportunity, Steve's low-down uncle Gary (Brian Cox) comes up with the Special Olympics ploy, and soon Steve has rechristened himself "Jeffy", developed a speech defect, and is competing against his mentally handicapped competition.

"ACHINGLY PREDICTABLE SCENES"

Trouble is, while The Ringer is desperate to do boundary-crossing comedy, it ends up desperate to persuade us that its heart is, really, in the right place. Cue achingly predictable scenes in which Knoxville (likeable, sure, but jeez is his acting bad) falls in love with noble, yet sappy, volunteer Lynn (Katherine Heigl), and discovers that - surprise! - just because his fellow competitors are handicapped, doesn't mean they aren't great guys. With a plot this threadbare, The Ringer needed to play to Knoxville's strengths: falling over and adolescent inanity. Instead we get the odd funny one-liner amid an awful lot of preachy pap.