The Ringer & When a Stranger Calls

Not many worthwhile new DVD's this week. Here are two pieces of crap you don't need to bother with, that I will trash for your amusement.

The Ringer



Tardsploitation: A film presenting a person or persons suffering from a mental or developmental disability as a spiritual figure, redeeming the "normals" through selfless, childlike acts of personal sacrifice and nobility of spirit. A condescending sub-genre of the tear-jerker in which the mentally retarded or simply slow-witted stand in for a natural humanity of innocence and pure goodness.

When I come down hard on tardsploitation (as I do fairly often), it's not to imply that Hollywood shouldn't make any films with disabled characters. I don't think the act of putting someone with Down Syndrome or some such thing in a movie is inherently cruel or wrong or exploitative. It just seems to me that no one has figured out how to make a film about such an individual without resorting to these tired, lazy cliches. Retarded guys (and gals) in film are always heroes or martyrs or examples of stoic grace and acceptance. They're never just, you know, people.

Take last year's Johnny Knoxville comedy The Ringer, about a sap who fakes retardation in order to fix the Special Olympics. Despite the fact that it was borrowed for a "South Park" episode last season, a situation that definitely robs the film of some of its shock value and immediacy, it's a solid high-concept premise. You hear that idea, you can pretty much figure out what the movie will be like.

Unfortunately, it becomes clear almost immediately that writer Ricky Blitt and director Barry Blaustein have no idea how to craft this concept into an entertaining film. So they fall back on all the most tired tardsploitation conventions. The Special Olympians in the film are just what you'd expect - awkward goons with bizarre social graces who are nonetheless saint-like, direct and almost completely without guile.

These movies all seem afflicted with the strange notion that intelligence makes a person evil. Now, sure, knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and education does allow people to question the world around them more. But if we all had the intelligence of an 8 year old, would the world really be a better place? Would our relationships all be more fulfilling? Would we actually be getting much more out of life? These movies seem to suggest, yes. I'd suggest that, below or above average intelligence, everyone's different and your life is what you make of it.

You may be thinking there's no way to win in this situation. If the movie goes all out, as offensive as possible towards those with learning disorders or autism, I'd accuse it of being insensitive and crass. But when it holds back and tries to go for a feel-good message of acceptance, I call it condescending and cloying. It's true...this is a delicate balance. I think the only solution, the only way to make a movie with retards that doesn't feel like a horrible tardsploitation film, would be to actually write characters and not Types.

And that's all there is in The Ringer. A stadium full of retarded guys and not an endearing or three-dimensional character in sight. I don't even remember anyone's name - there's scrunchy-faced, blathering retarded guy, fat awkward retarded guy, slow-talking creepy retarded guy, oddly hostile retarded guy and mousey, bow-legged retarded guy. And of course, when you get to know them, they're all really sweet and self-aware and likable.

I'm not trying to be offensive...That's the movie, not me. I wanted to actually get to know some of these guys. The Special Olympians make up the vast majority of the cast, but they're around only to be "inspiriational" and to turn everything we know about the retarded right on its head! Without actually saying or doing anything funny!

For this and many other reasons, mainly relating to a dumb, obvious script and a lazy lead performance by Johnny Knoxville, the story of Steve Barker and his rise to the top of the Special Olympics world couldn't be more lifeless or boring. Steve (Knoxville) needs a sudden influx of cash, to help repair the mangled fingers of his immigrant friend (don't ask) and to settle the outragoeous gambling debts of his sleazebag uncle (Brian Cox, as part of his Annual Tour of Shitty American Movies.) Naturally, he decided to infiltrate the Special Olympics.

I mean, after all...He's a normal, he'll win every event, right? Right? Oh, did you guys already see that "South Park"? Never mind, then.

Of course, there are stock complications. Steve falls for one of the counselors, Lynn (Katherine Heigl), but of course can't do anything about it because she thinks he's retarded! The other athletes figure out that Steve's faking it, but decide to help him anyway for no good reason! Lynn turns out to have a scummy womanizing boyfriend, but again, Steve's helpless to do anything. Oh, how will these situations all resolve themselves by the end of the Big Match?

Okay, it's formula, that would be fine if it was funny. But the jokes just misfire. I think a big problem is Knoxville. Most of the comedy revolves around a normal guy pretending to have a mental disability, but Knoxville's "Jeffy" persona isn't even close to amusing. He just kind of cocks his head to the side and talks in falsetto and refers to himself in the third person. "Jeffy likes you." "Jeffy wants apples." "Jeffy didn't mean to do that!" Ha ha!

So let's review...The main character is dull and unsympathetic, the supporting characters are cardboard cut-outs and stand-ins for common retarded guy cliches, the narrative is bland and has already been done well by "South Park," the jokes aren't funny and the whole enterprise is so terrified of causing offensive that it lacks any sort of edge. That's a recipie for one stupid, pointless comedy.

[And, yes, I know that The Ringer was made before the "South Park" episode. But still, almost everyone who will see the movie has seen that show, making the comparison inevitable. It's not my fault they sat on this bad boy since early 2004.]

When a Stranger Calls



There's low-budget horror and then there's last year's When a Stranger Calls, a film that appears to have been made on roughly the same budget as last night's episode of Chapulin Colorado. Running a robust 87 minutes with credits, meaning that if you see it at an AMC theater it will run just a few minutes shorter than the pre-show countdown, the entire film consists of a girl on the phone, running through a large house. In other words, it's MTV's Laguna Beach with less Maroon 5 on the soundtrack and slightly more dramatic lighting.

The girl is babysitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle, who was born when I was already 8 years old). She's trying to get some homework done, but this creepy guy (voiced by Lance Henrickson) keeps calling her. At first, it's relatively benign. After a while, it starts to get unsettling, and that's when he implies that he might like to consider removing Jill's insides before the evening is through.

One problem with basing your film not only on an older film but a popular urban legend is that everyoen knows the story. When a Stranger Calls responds to this dilemma by ignoring it, and plugging along as if we all didn't already know the phone calls were coming from inside the house. (That's not a spoiler, by the way, because it's revealed in the TV commercials for the DVD.)

I guess super-clever scripting or an excess of style might be able to distract an audience from the fact that this totally uneventful film leads up to a completely obvious twist, but director Simon West (of Con Air fame legend infamy...fuck it, Con Air just plain sucks...) doesn't even try.

He just points the camera at Camilla, has her walk or run around, turn lights on and off, and that's about it. There aren't even any cool kill scenes or big scares as you'd expect with what amounts to a slasher film. In fact, there's nothing that could possibly keep an audience's interest. Jill enters the house, walks around, meets the maid (Rosine Hatem), checks on the kids, gets a few scary phone calls, runs around for a bit and then the movie ends. You just keep waiting and waiting for it to pick up, for some death or mayhem or action or something, and it never arrives. It's like Samuel Beckett's Scream, a parallel absurd universe in which Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Michael Myers.