Metacritic reviews

The movie surprised me. It treats its disabled characters with affection and respect, it has a plot that uses the Special Olympics instead of misusing them, and it's actually kind of sweet.

These guys are laugh-out-loud funny, not because they're being belittled, but because they're finally getting a chance to show a sense of humor onscreen.

If anything, The Ringer doesn't go far enough to exploit its edgy premise, but it does have two conceits that consistently pay off: Knoxville turns out to be a lesser athlete than his competitors, and he's so bad at acting "retarded" that only the unchallenged buy into his ruse.

The movie strains so hard to have its heart in the right place that it never really exploits the guilty-pleasure fun of the premise.

This wannabe daring comedy about a man who attempts to "fix" the Special Olympics strains for that patented naughty and nice balance with squirmingly squishy results.

Sometimes veering close to being a promotional film for the Special Olympics, pic will be applauded by the disability community and its advocates but quickly ignored by longtime fans of the Farrellys and Knoxville.

At the sweet heart of this silly film is a determination to upend the clichés and assumptions applied to the population we condescendingly label "special."

Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.

More than predictable. It plods along with the inevitability of a doomed soldier going off to war.

The Ringer is astoundingly craptastic not because the handicapped are handled poorly (though if they were paid more than union scale I'd be surprised), but because it's one of the most singularly unfunny films ever made.