Critic Reviews

• Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

  A miscast Ryan struggles with a Detroit accent and a script that goes nowhere.

• Laura Sinagra, Village Voice

  What could have been a Working Girl hoot gets mired in redundant assertions of Kallen's feistiness.

• Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

  Somewhere along the way, I found myself enjoying Against the Ropes, not in spite of my better judgment, but because something in the movie defies the whole notion of better judgment altogether.

• Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

  So anemic you should probably order iron supplements with your popcorn, its plot so predictable it makes falling dominoes seem like a white-knuckle thrill ride.

• Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

  A boilerplate melodrama whose good guys and bad guys are so baldly drawn they could have been conceived by Friz Freleng.

• Susan Walker, Toronto Star

  Bathos wrapped in a formulaic screenplay bolstered with cliches, not only about the boxing world but about tough women and the men who hate them.

• Nell Minow, Common Sense Media

  Uninspired tale feels like a made-for-TV movie.

• Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com

  An inoffensively average, formulaic entertainment with a marketing-problematic point of view.

• Kam Williams, Princeton Town Topics

  It's hard to expect anyone to infuse much passion into a "by-the-numbers" boxing movie which telegraphs every punch.

• Peter T. Chattaway, Christianity Today

  Against the Ropes may not deliver a knock-out, but it does land some pretty good blows.

• Forrest Hartman, Reno Gazette-Journal

  It's one thing to make a predictable Hollywood movie. It's another thing to make a predictable Hollywood movie based on a fascinating life.

• , Empire Magazine

  What could have been a gripping tale becomes hammy and overdone.

• Wendy Ide, Times [UK]

  Meg Ryan is busily torpedoing any respect she might have accrued

• Stella Papamichael, BBC

  This movie lacks any complexity. Dutton opts instead to embellish the story with boxing clichés.

• Edith Alderette, San Francisco Examiner

  Ryan's Kallen is painfully two-dimensional.

• Jeff Otto, IGN Movies

  Mediocre, cliché-ridden but passable entertainment that completely falls apart in the third act.

• Cynthia Fuchs, PopMatters

  Complicated by the ways that race, masculinity, and media shape expectations and possibilities in the boxing world.

• Eric Lurio, Greenwich Village Gazette

  The film isn't good enough for the full price.

• Tony Toscano, Talking Pictures (U.S.)

  What the audience ends up with is a watered down whitewash of Kallen's life story.

• John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

  Ryan seems to be having fun, at least: she speaks with a breathy working-class accent that's part Lauren Bacall, part Teamster.

Read all 24 critic reviews