20th Anniversary TLDR: The Ringer (2005)
You scratched my CD! You picked it up in pure daylight and you scratched it!
Plot: Pressured by a greedy uncle and a pile of debt, lovable loser Steve Barker resorts to an unthinkable, contemptible, just-crazy-enough-to-work scheme. He pretends to be mentally challenged to rig the upcoming Special Olympics and bring home the gold. But when Steve’s fellow competitors get wise to the con, they inspire him to rise to the greatest challenge of all: becoming a better person.
Direction: Barry W. Blaustein was one of Eddie Murphy's writers for a long time (Coming to America, Boomerang, The Nutty Professor) and his non-Eddie stuff wasn't nearly as successful. He's probably best known for directing the wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat, which he made after he was "outed as a professional wrestling fan," according to a Wikipedia citation that links to Richard Crouse's book The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen. I think that's really funny. I'm worried someone is gonna out me as a fan of The Traitors.
Screenplay: Ricky Blitt has written for tv shows like Family Guy and Loudermilk, while the quality of his film work is varied. This is obviously a tightrope walk, but it's often at least attempting to be thoughtful and sensitive. He's a Razzie winner for his contribution to Movie 43 (which is only in the American cut of the film - something we learned on the Better Than Bad? podcast), while his latest film, Dear Santa, co-written with longtime partner Peter Farrelly, was actually pretty fun and there was no reason for you guys to hate it that much.
Performances: I have absolutely no idea how to talk about Johnny Knoxville's performance in this movie (is...he...supposed...to...never mind), so instead I'll just reminisce about that '04/'05 time when he tried to be a non-Jackass movie star and studios thought it was worth a shot. Katherine Heigl made this movie on the verge of Grey's Anatomy taking off and changing her life forever. Brian Cox, meanwhile, was still 15 years away from his megahit Succession, and while he had plenty of success already (the first Hannibal Lector!), it's fun to watch his slum it in crap(?) like this as the terrible uncle who gets Knoxville into this whole mess.
Best Moment: Just about any time this surprises you with how genuinely sweet it is. You really just expect it to be mean but it's just not.
Fun Fact: Because of the website The Ringer, you can't just type "the ringer movie" into Google, you have to type "the ringer movie 2005."
Imaginary Accolade: As pointed out in this Letterboxd review, Best Use of The Single F-Bomb PG-13 Allows
Everything is too long! Is it too long? All comedies should MAX out at 95 minutes. This is 94.
Rating: This movie is so unbelievably complicated.
Credit: Plot synopsis from Letterboxd via TMDb.