Blaustein’s underlying current of sarcasm and irony ironically helps the viewers recognize the humanity in the film’s intellectually challenged characters. By employing comedic elements, he encourages his audience to look beyond a medical diagnosis in determining character. When able-minded businessman Steve Barker (Johnny Knoxville) successfully enters the Special Olympics as Jimmy Dahmor, he demonstrates that society instinctively categorizes individuals based on stereotypes grounded in mere appearances.

Steve Barker’s play-acting at being mentally challenged provides both himself and the audience with a VIP access to several real-life special athletes, helping us to break down our own prejudices that would regard the intellectually disabled individual as simply “other.” When the special athletes engage in negative behaviors, such as practical jokes, they remind us of our own imperfections and intolerant tendencies. The audience is encouraged to identify with the intellectually challenged individuals’ locker room mischief and pursuit of companionship. And six-time gold medalist Jimmy Washington (Leonard Flowers) introduces the viewers to a hierarchy within the challenged community: surprisingly, he appears at the games in a limousine, surrounded by bodyguards.

Periodically glancing over at Charlie and seeing him laugh out loud, I knew that this film was successfully sending its message that the mentally challenged are not so different than the rest of us. Although Blaustein took a risk in incorporating several challenged athletes’ crude humor and sexual innuendos, his overall message rang clear: it is often times our common misconceptions of the intellectually challenged which serve as a basis of our immediate dismissal of and inability to accept them as functioning individuals in our society.

By Jennifer Rimbach (UNC-CH)