I didn't have high hopes

Rating: 7/10 (25 March 2006)

I've just got in from watching The Ringer and I must say I was impressed beyond my original expectations by the character development. It would have been incredibly easy to make a "lets all laugh at the handicapped" film with cheap laughs and no message. The slapstick moments you'd expect from Knoxville were present and effective too.
The film did suffer from the odd bit of glurge and moral over-redemption but on the whole it worked quite well (bar some glaring continuity that even I spotted after a pint). I'd recommend it to most people, though I don't think it'd benefit from a second viewing. I don't know if it was predominantly a British thing however, but it did feel like a lot of people in the cinema were afraid to laugh initially due to the subject matter. The way the characters were developed did ease this a little as the film went on though.