Ringmaster
by Neil Abramson
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DVD details
Actor: Jaime Pressly, Jerry Springer, John Capodice, Molly Hagan, William McNamaraDirector: Neil Abramson
Brand: Lions Gate
Producer: Bradley Jenkel
Producer: Brent Baum
Producer: Brian Medavoy
Producer: David Bales
Producer: Don Corsini
Producer: Donald Kushner
Writer: Jon Bernstein
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-03-30
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
Product features:
- DVD Details: Actors: Jerry Springer, Jaime Pressly, William McNamara, Molly Hagan, John Capodice
- Directors: Neil Abramson
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1; Number of discs: 1; Studio: Lions Gate
- DVD Release Date: March 30, 1999; Run Time: 90 minutes
DVD Reviews of Ringmaster
DVD Review: Just a few remarks from a viewer over in Scandinavia
Summary: 4 Stars
With 49 reviews currently in here, I don't need to go in depth on this one. I am sure that premise, synopsis etc. has been discussed at length by prior reviewers.
This movie happened on me a few days ago, as leaves on trees clouded my sattelite dish and all I could receive was national television channels in Norway (including a couple of commercial ones). I had read nothing about it, and just came across the opening titles as I zapped through the 4 sorry channels at my disposal.
It immediately caught my eye.
I watched it all the way through, promising myself at the very beginning that once this film gets boring or stupid, I'll do what I had previously intented to do, which was watch a DVD I had borrowed from a friend. At no point during the film did I feel the urge to stop watching.
Obviously, a lot of people will thrash a movie like this. It's main charachters engage in lewd, obscene and morally questionable acts all the way throughout the film. Many people will be put off by this nasty and/or downright trashy behaviour, but it resonnated with me.
I know people like this. I have at least one friend who has slept with bot mother and daughter in some backwaters place in Florida. I have at least one ex-girlfriend who has done a guy that also her mother has done. And as to this x-gf; the things she put me through, would have been solid Jerry Springer and/or Ricki Lake show, had we had those in Scandinavia. And she had similar stories with most other boyfriends she had done. I'd compare her with the trailer trash daughter in this movie without a second of hesitation. According to the eyes of the beholder, she could be either slightly more or slightly less sexy than this charachter in "Ringmaster".
After seeing it, I conferred with my Video & DVD guide, a book from 2003 (paperback). It awarded the film with a turkey symbol, and discarded it as pure and utter sleaze. Well, this particular paperback has families as target audiences, but still, that was too easy a dismissal. I couldn't quite believe that everybody would miss the point completely, and later conferred with Rottentomatoes.com. It didn't have a 0% fresh rating, as one might expect. Instead it had an 18% fresh rating. Most memorably, Roger Ebert, arguably America's (and perhaps the world's) finest movie critic, awarded it two - 2 - out of four possible stars, and provided a decent and just comment on it.
But Ebert probably never experienced people and/or conditions like these in his own life. Had he had such experiences, I believe he would have awarded it three stars.
I give it four out of five stars. I don't see how a movie like this one could have been made much more realistically. The finish is very much like that of a TV movie, but I gather that it was in wide theatrical release. I believe the TV movie finish is justifiable, as these are NOT larger-than-life charachters on display here. On the contrary, they are everyday people of the somewhat less fortunate kind, and should be portrayed as such.
This story is not earth-shattering. It is pretty much a feel-good film, and has no big central theme that is intended to be revelatory or remarkably uplifting. It is a movie that paints probably a quite fair picture of both ex-politician (mayor of Cincinnati, was he?) -turned-talk-show-host Jerry Springer, and of the knd of people who one would think constitutes a mean average of the ususal fair he and his TV show collaborators and henchmen deal with on a daily basis.
For the sake of entertainment, the charachters are to varying degrees more animated than one would expect from such a demographic, and maybe in some instances slightly less. Like Ebert states, the actors mostly do a fine job of portraying their charachters in a decent but somewhat superficial manner (this IS a comedy-drama, not pure comedy or pure parody), and no charachter is taken to the level of ridicule and/or outright parody.
We can empathize with these people - or at least we can if we have actual real life experience that compels us to believe that these people could be for real. (If one reflects upon it, an all-out-realistic and down to the nitty-gritty movie about people from these demographics, could just as well have played as Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers"; all-be-it at the opposite and most extreme end of the scale of mild-to-excessive portrayal of the denizens of trailer parks and such).
There are touching moments, such as the very plausible emptyness, lonelyness and doubts felt by the trailer park mother when she is all alone in her hotel room.
I can recommend this movie. It's not Saturday night fare or a "date movie". It's something you could watch on your laptop while on a Greyhound-bus or an interstate train. It's something to watch in your dorm room on a night that your schedule is empty, or if you're in sick from work with the flu. It won't change your life, but it'll be a whole lot more easy-going on your senses than actually watching an episode of the televised Jerry Springer show... Where the TV-show is chaotic and in-your-face, this little flick gives you enough background to actually empathize, more or less understand and possibly even believe the "guests" Springer has on his usual shows.
No small feat that.
Description of Ringmaster
RINGMASTER - DVD MovieShock-talk TV host Jerry Springer makes his feature-film debut in Ringmaster and is, unfortunately, the least interesting aspect of this ragtag comedy that purports to be a behind-the-scenes look at the kind of people who regularly appear on his show. To be fair, Springer doesn't have much to do except play the often-befuddled moderator. The only time he breaks loose is to defend his guests' right to air their dirty laundry on national television. But most of the juicy lines and situations are assigned to the competent cast of trailer-park denizens who pop in and out of each other's beds and then go on TV to tell everyone about it. There's a hair-pulling scene about every 10 minutes or so. But unlike the nationally televised syndicated program, there is also a great deal of real nudity and unbleeped profanity. There aren't many surprises here, but the actors are amiable and attractive and don't play down to their characters. For all its raunchiness, Ringmaster doesn't have a mean bone in its body. The DVD is formatted in widescreen. Additional features include the film's trailer, a music video, production information, and a commentary from the director, Neil Abramson. --Richard Natale
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