Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby Review

The funniest joke in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is on the audience. Or at least that segment of the audience with patchwork jackets and block numbers on their baseball caps. While this movie may appear to be a stamp of validation for an oft-ridiculed segment of American society -- a sort of Passion of the Christ for the gearhead set -- it is in fact one of the more hilarious and sneakier parodies Hollywood could have come up with.

Nobody can argue that there are very few targets more primed for skewering than Nascar culture. Talladega could have easily stumbled over the sheer ease of it all, but very little of the humor comes from attacking Nascar overtly. Will Ferrell, who plays the titular character, and his team are more clever and underhanded. Instead of a long rant on the silliness of a sport where the competitors go round and round a circle, they merely exemplify the simplemindedness of it all in Ricky Bobby's favorite childhood catch-phrase: "I want to go fast." Ferrell and crew are working the ribs of racing fans here. After all, they're going to be a big part of the box office this weekend. However, they deliver quite the knock-out blow in the final minutes of the film, a moment of pure comedy that will have those God-fearin’ good-ole boys squirming in their seats. It was one of the purest joys I’ve had in a theater in a long time.

Talladega Nights is a more straight-forward presentation than we’re used to from Ferrell. He dispensed with much of the winking humor prevalent in Weddings Crashers and Anchorman. There are no cameos by Vince Vaughn or Ben Stiller. It’s basically shot as a standard biopic, and it’s by far Ferrell’s most consistent character to date. Of course, when much of your character development comes from white trash maxims like “I want to go fast” and “If you’re not first, you’re last” it’s fairly easy to stay consistent, because you don’t have to go very deep.

And that’s how we like Ferrell. Channeling his long-retired George W impression, Ferrell gives us another likable buffoon who we follow through a meteoric rise, a catastrophic fall, and of course, the redeeming return. Surrounded by another solid ready-and-willing cast, we’re immediately pulled into this haphazard family who pulls its dinner straight off Ricky’s bumper stickers -- KFC, Domino’s Pizza, and PowerAde (Ricky has an endorsement deal that requires he mention PowerAde whenever he says grace). Ricky has a “tractor beam of hotness” for a wife, played with inspiring commitment by Leslie Bibb, a BFF racing partner, the shake to his bake, played by John C. Reilly, and two mouthy sons who threaten to beat the piss out of their grandfather. The first scene we get of the family together, with an extended improvised debate regarding the family’s favorite Jesus (Baby Jesus, Grown Up Jesus, Ninja Jesus) is one of the funniest scenes I’ve witnessed in a long time, and I’m fairly certain I didn’t catch everything there was.

Things go well for Ricky Bobby until the arrival of Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), a gay, French, Formula One driver who immediately comes in and steals Ricky’s spotlight as the best Nascar driver alive. In one of the most surreal moments in my years of film going, the crowd in my theater booed when Girard revealed his home country. Actually booed. In interviews, Cohen said that the character was designed to be everything a typical Nascar fan would hate. Judging by the reaction of the crowd, I’d say they succeeded. I’d love to know how these same people dealt with the twist at the end of the film.

I’ve become a big fan of Anchorman over the past couple years, and I enjoyed Talladega a lot more than I enjoyed Anchorman the first time around. The entire cast, notably Reilly, Cohen, and Gary Cole (who plays Bobby's derelict daddy) play off Ferrell as well as his sidekicks in Anchorman, and the lack of asides and winks at the camera were a nice respite from the usual self-referential style of this comedy crew. If this film follows along the lines of Old School and Anchorman, getting better with repeat viewings, we’ve got another must have for the DVD shelf. Fun stuff.

Final Grade: B (likely to improve over time)