special olympics Tagged Articles at Cinematical

"Not only might it happen, it will happen." Timothy P. Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, told The New York Times that he and representatives of his group and others will picket the opening of Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Reportedly, more than a dozen disabilities groups, including the National Down Syndrome Congress and the American Association of People with Disabilities, made plans over the weekend to start protesting on Monday.

Dreamworks already pulled down a promotional web site that was considered offensive a few days ago, as William Goss reported, and has altered some television advertising, but that's as far as they're going. A spokesman told the NYT : "No changes or cuts to the film will be made." Both Stiller and Dreamworks exec Stacy Snider insist they are not targeting the disabled, but the foolish ambition of certain actors. Shriver told the NYT he's asking members of Congress "for a resolution condemning what he called 'hate speech' in the movie." The film's repeated use of the term "retard" is "a particular sore point."

For personal reasons, I have a strong distaste for calling someone who's intellectually disabled a "retard" -- I think it's hateful and insensitive -- but I don't feel that a Congressional resolution or a boycot will do anything more than anger and harden the hearts of the very people who might rethink their vocabulary. To be fair, I haven't seen the movie, but Shriver and other protestors have.

If it happens, will you support the boycott? Or do you think this is another case of "political correctness" gone too far?

Since it doesn't open for another week, I'm not allowed to spill much about what I thought of Tropic Thunder, but suffice it to say, the laughs get off to an extra-early start with a collection of fake trailers featuring our leads as the film's stars in other projects. Along the same lines came promotional efforts that included a fake trailer for a fake making-of doc (well, the DVD will prove that one) and several websites for those characters and their movies.

One of those websites was for Ben Stiller's character, Tugg Speedman, in his high-profile bid for awards glory as a mentally disabled farmhand in Simple Jack. However, out of context, this high-concept faux-site has stirred up concern from the likes of many very real disability rights groups -- among them, the Special Olympics -- and according to Variety, the site has been pulled down in response.

The concern is fairly grounded, but it's a relatively minor kerfuffle that will damage neither the image of the represented individuals nor the performance of the film when it opens... a film which just so happens to boast a terrifically astute assessment of performances similar to Speedman's in the real industry, no part of which can stand to be repeated here and especially now.

• Doogal - A saccharine, cheap-looking CGI import from Britain about a lazy, cowardly, sugar-addicted pooch (with a mullet cut) who must find a way to save the world from an icy death is not the follow-up to Hoodwinked that Disney escapees Bob and Harvey Weinstein hoped for...or we asked for. At least they've got the swell Over The Hedge in theaters this week. Formerly titled The Magic Roundabout and re-dubbed (Doogal, that is. Not Over The Hedge.)

• Duma - With most arthouse films rated "R", it is always a pleasure when one comes along that culture mavens can take their kids to, and The Black Stallion director Carroll Ballard's latest nature trek -- a visually lovely adventure -- certainly does fit that bill. It is about a 12-year-old South African boy (Alexander Michaletos) who must return his pet cheetah to the wild, encountering and overcoming a number of obstacles along the way, the biggest one being our initial reluctance to accept its premise.
 

When you're a kid, the word "retarded" is one of those placeholders you use until you realize that in the world of grown-ups, it is not polite. It, like the word "gay", is most often used on the playground to indicate, "That [particular thing] represents a period in my life that I have grown beyond as a person, however young." It only has a hateful connotation when a child is taught to be hateful with it. In the world of Peter and Bobby Farrelly, however, it is a word used to challenge that artificial construct that is Political Correctness, to provoke us into taking another look at the definitions by which we live and judge the quality of life of others.

The premise of The Ringer almost automatically prompts cries of bad taste: "Johnny Knoxville plays a guy who pretends to be mentally challenged so that he can compete in and fix the Special Olympics." Perhaps the thought of the Jackass star being the vehicle for heightened understanding is just too unfathomable, especially when crap like The Dukes Of Hazzard has marked his high water mark as a movie star. Maybe we have seen one too many Wayans Brothers routines where the disabled are the focus of ridicule. Whatever our predisposition, the Farrellys, longtime champions of the short-shrifted in movies like There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal and even the stinker Stuck On You, again maintain that the ones with the handicap are the people who would so quickly and callously dismiss someone based on a mathematical misfortune.