I Just Bought My Ticket on the Amtrak to Hell

Rating: 3/10 (6 August 2006)

If you have high hopes for a film starring Johnny Knoxville that centers around rigging the Special Olympics, you are either very strange or are way too naive (or both). The film has one joke (that mentally handicapped people are funny to watch) and uses it over and over again. Which is amusing most of the time, but more often than not seems to only secure my seat on the bus ride to hell.
There is nothing new in this film. The cliché of a man entering a group he finds inferior only to discover they are no less human? It's here. The man who falls in love with a woman but is lying to her about his identity the whole time? Oh yeah, that, too. I could parallel this film with about a dozen off the top of my head, so whoever wrote this certainly was not trying to break any new ground. (Even the premise - rigging the Olympics - had been a South Park episode.) For what it's worth, Johnny Knoxville did a fine job. Trying to imagine him being retarded is not much of a stretch, though he certainly is very good at physical comedy and has no reservations in injuring himself for a laugh. The female lead (Katherine Heigl?) seems to serve no other purpose than to be attractive and not overly bright prospect of the main character. If that was her purpose, she hit the mark.
For some cheap laughs, you might want to see this film. But it's not one you want to put as a high priority on your Netflix queue.