February 20, 2004 | Imagine a cross between Rocky and Erin Brockovich – yes, I know that’s difficult, but try anyway – and you may be ready to go the distance with Against the Ropes , a lightweight comedy-drama about a feisty female manager who gate-crashes into the boy’s club of professional boxing.
Although “inspired” by the real-world exploits of Jackie Kallen, a sassy, brassy sportswriter who broke rules and ruffled feathers when she started managing prizefighters in the late 1980s, the movie plays like formulaic feel-good fiction. From the opening round to the closing clinch, events unfold in a mildly amusing but thoroughly predictable manner. And despite their best efforts to turn their true-life tale into a rousing saga of uplift and empowerment, the filmmakers – screenwriter Cheryl Edwards ( Save the Last Dance ), actor-turned-director Charles S. Dutton — rarely are able to score dramatic upsets or emotional knockouts.
Edwards and Dutton re-imagine Jackie as a leggy thirtysomething secretary with a fondness for clingy clothing, a passion for the sweet science – and all the spunk we’ve come to expect from lead characters in star vehicles hand-tooled for Meg Ryan.
We first see our heroine as an unappreciated dynamo who’s humiliated on a daily basis while working as secretary to Irving Abel (Joe Cortese), director of the Cleveland Coliseum. The daughter of a trainer, Jackie knows more about boxing than her boorish boss, who takes all the credit for her behind-the-scenes work. And she has a sharper eye for raw talent than Sam LaRocca (Tony Shalhoub), a bullying promoter with a whim of iron. Neither man takes Jackie seriously until she joins forces with a veteran trainer (Dutton, doing double duty) to transform Luther Shaw (well-cast Omar Epps), a drug dealer’s enforcer, into a middleweight contender.
Ryan has trouble with her tricky working-class accent, which comes and goes before leaving altogether. And she’s sporadically laugh-out-loud silly while flouncing around in revealing outfits that look like Erin Brokovich’s hand-me-downs. Overall, however, she is genuinely engaging as the determined Jackie, and only occasionally relies on her trademark smiley-weepy shtick to warm our hearts. She even manages to sustain a rooting interest in her character after Jackie turns vain and ruthless – prior to a third-act redemption, of course — while single-mindedly pursuing her dream.
