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"Listen to the Barbie doll with the glass balls..."

One of the opening shots in Against the Ropes perfectly exemplifies much of what's wrong with the obvious, irritating boxing girl power movie: a title card announces that we are currently in Cleveland, and immediately after it fades off the screen, the camera pans over to a huge sign that reads, to what I imagine are stunned gasps from audiences around the world, "Cleveland Colisseum."

Redundancy hampers this ostensibly crowd-pleasing biopic of the world's first female professional boxing manager from the first scene, which has little Jackie Kallen being told "you do not belong up here" when she tries to scamper into the boxing ring, to the last, which, so help me, tries to revive the Slow Clap. In between, we have the plucky-as-ever Meg Ryan (and I thought she had turned over a new leaf with In the Cut, but clearly not) attempting to climb the precarious ladder of the boxing world, firing zingers at spiteful men every chance she gets.

Her career, seemingly dead in the water, gets a boost when, as secretary to a promoter, she gets into an argument with the unreasonably arrogant and chauvinistic boxing manager Sam Larocca (Tony Shalhoub, who might have saved the movie with a better character to play). On a whim, Sam offers Jackie the contract of a loser boxer, and she accepts the challenge much to the chagrin of her boss. Her new client turns out to be a useless drug dealer, but while at his apartment, she witnesses a fight in which a new arrival wipes the floor with the beleaguered boxer and one of his henchmen. He is Luther Shaw (Omar Epps), a cynical street tough who is amused and confused by Jackie's pleads for him to enter professional boxing. After considerable wheedling, Jackie convinces Luther to give it a shot, and an even more cynical trainer (director Charles S. Dutton) is brought in to whip the fighter into shape.

Subplots abound. Jackie's best friend and former co-worker decides to become romantically involved with Luther. Larocca plots to take down Jackie and Luther by convincing the latter that his manager is in the game solely for her own benefit. HBO demands exclusives at the expense of a faithful local newsman whom Jackie owes many favors. Luther wants more attention from Jackie, and is tired of having her speak for him all the time. And so on.

Thematically and tonally, Against the Ropes is nonsense; Jackie Kallen begins as a spunky heroine, is turned into a self-aggrandizing she-beast, and then supposedly back into a lovable spokesman for gender equality in all things. But screenwriter Cheryl Edwards (Save the Last Dance) does such a gangbusters job of turning Jackie into a silly, oblivious doofus in the second act that her über-noble actions in the climax and beyond seem like a put-on. The protagonist is such a puppet of the script that we she is impossible to care about.

Meg Ryan, to her credit, weathers the screenplay's schizophrenia with admirable aplomb, doing everything required of her when it is required. Omar Epps is a searing talent, and it helps that his character is the film's sole emotional anchor, the only thing that consistently makes sense. The actor gives the kind of performance that inevitably gets ignored by the critics -- natural, unshowy, selling us on the character's emotional outbursts as well as the quiet moments.

The happy ending is atrocious. It's not that the story doesn't merit a happy ending -- the real Jackie Kallen, if I'm not mistaken, is successful and presumably content -- but the way Against the Ropes pulls it off (or, rather, doesn't) is deadly. I mentioned the Slow Clap and indeed an egregious version of that worst of movie cliches is prominently featured. It's made even more awful by the fact that the Slow Clap is a blatant replacement for, y'know, an actual ending; it's a cheap screenwriter's trick to get out of having to write something subtle and worthwhile. And you know how at the end of a boxing match, the referee lifts the arm of the triumphant winner into the air? Well guess what? Against the Ropes manages to work that into the ending as well, proving just how clever it really is.