friday 3 april 2009
at home – tv
jonny knoxville pretends to be mentally challenged in order to win the special olympics
this was quite fun actually. i rather like jonny knoxville so i would’ve been more tolerant if it were absolute crap. charlotte had thankfully forgotten who he was and it was only when we were halfway through it that she realised he was that guy from jackass. by then she was already into the film and there was no backing out!
while the ringer is pretty okay, one thing it did make me realise is quite how slick and well-made a lot of these apatow movies are. the ringer was quite a bit emptier (if one can say that of a comedy!) and clunkier. if one judged it purely for its comedic merits then this would be rather poor, with just the odd moment of funnyness, but the special people from the special olympics were just so cute! “special people”? that sounds a bit vague, but, well, what else do i call them? i can’t really call them anything else!
anyway, yes, these special people were really good! not good for special people, but really properly good. they definitely made the movie. charlotte and i loved them!
katherine hiegl was also a godsend. i really don’t know what they would’ve done without her. she really gives credibility to these ridulous films. she also rather lifts them out of the a toilet a bit. and, also, she’s simply very good!
i was rather surprised by how knoxville toned down his parody – after all, its what you expect from a film about a ringer in the special olympics. perhaps they felt bad about taking the mick? so it takes a bit of adjustment as you realise this isn’t going to be a laugh-out-loud gross-out comedy but a sentimental cutesy comedy. once that becomes clear then the film is great fun!
so yeah, not something i’d ever pay for but quite funny if you’re in the mood and theres nothing else on.
cast:
jonny knoxville – the ringer guy
katherine hiegl – the love interest
Nice review. I haven’t seen it, but I love how you managed to fool Charlotte into watching it. Ha ha!!
Good points about the Apatow movies. I think you are spot on there. It’s like comedy needed him (and his dudes, of course) to shake up the genre. Bring on the bromance. It’s like how music needed Kurt to shake us all out of our poodle-haired rock slumber (ok, so the Pixies probably were doing that, but Kurt brought it to the mainstream, much to his chagrin).
I am getting philosophical, aren’t I?