Meg Ryan hasn’t had the best luck lately.
The actress has had little success finding a balance between her romantic comedy schtick and dramatic stretches. Her dramatic turn in 2000’s “Proof of Life” received good reviews but was overshadowed by her affair with co-star Russell Crowe (as well as cuckolded husband Dennis Quaid’s career renaissance). And then a year later, “Kate & Leopold” became one romantic comedy too many for Ryan, and audiences stayed away.
Ryan received a ton of buzz for 2003’s “In the Cut,” the erotic thriller by Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion (“The Piano”). Despite the fact that the film featured Ryan’s first nude scenes, it received a brutal spanking from both critics and audiences.
But in the new comedy-drama biopic “Against the Ropes,” Ryan gets a role that blends her cutesiness with her edginess. She stars as Jackie Kallen, a boxing aficionado languishing in a dead-end job.
Kallen aspires to infiltrate the “boys club” of sports management, and on a dare from venomous rival LaRocca, nastily played by Tony Shalhoub (a complete 180 from his TV character Adrian Monk), she buys a boxer for a dollar. He turns out to be street kid Luther Shaw (Omar Epps), and the two team up to reach the top. The plot is a combination of “Jerry Maguire” and “Erin Brockovich,” but unlike those two films, “Ropes” is far from a knockout.
Wearing tops as tight as a wetsuit and skirts way above the knee, Ryan tries to channel Julia Roberts’ Oscar-winning turn as Erin Brockovich — and winds up looking like a middle-aged Tara Reid. She uses a come-and-go Midwestern accent that is unnecessary and annoying. But accent and wardrobe aside, Ryan gives a sharp performance. She is back in high gear, igniting the screen with Jackie’s passion and is a pleasure to watch again. Unfortunately, it is not enough to save “Against the Ropes,” which suffers from a script that’s down for the count by page two.
The adversity Jackie faces is overly exaggerated. “Ropes” delivers many sucker punches to men that are below the belt. In the opening scene, an eight-year-old Jackie watches her father train his boxers and cheers them on, eyes wide with admiration (think the little girl in “Remember the Titans”). Suddenly, her father grabs her, smacks her around in an ambiguously violent PG-13 fashion and orders her to basically shut the hell up.
“Ropes” is actor Charles S. Dutton’s (“Rudy,” TV’s “Roc”) first foray into feature film directing. Dutton himself served seven years in prison for killing a man in a street fight when he was 17. Perhaps the experience explains why all of the men in “Ropes” are presented as vicious animals who treat women as objects — with the notable exception of Dutton himself, who plays veteran trainer Felix Reynolds who helps Kallen train Shaw.
LaRocca and Abel (Joe Cortese), Jackie’s pig of a boss, hold an unprovoked, unadulterated hatred toward her, but the movie does not explain the unwarranted vendettas these men have. “Ropes” does not trust audience members to make up their own minds about the characters; it needs to create these harsh, hyperbolic polarities between Jackie and the boys to ensure that we all root for Jackie.
“Against the Ropes” comes close to having nearly every line be a recycled cliche. Rather than developing Ryan’s character, screenwriter Cheryl Edwards has filled the movie with platitude after platitude. Consequently, important aspects of Ryan’s character are broached but then instantly forgotten. In one scene, Shaw asks Jackie why she never had any children. She sighs and takes a moment as the camera tracks in — and then the topic is dropped, never mentioned again.
The movie also hints that Jackie may have feelings for her boxer, especially when he randomly begins dating her friend Renee (Kerry Washington). However, for all the setup, there is no payoff. The subject evaporates from the plot. Even though the movie is a biography, it never delves into Jackie’s personal life.
Ryan proves that she can survive without writer Nora Ephron, who penned many of Ryan’s hits, such as “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally …” But it seems that her bad luck will continue: Paramount shelved “Against the Ropes” for nearly a year, and now that it’s finally being released, America will probably spit it out like a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear.
“Against the Ropes”: C+
