Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Dear reader, You are sophisticated and intelligent. You can wax intelligent about literature and history and news and music. You love sports and approach them intelligently (Holmes excepted -- he's a Yankees fan). But if you are a regular or semi-regular reader of dcat, the odds are pretty good that you love you some Will Ferrell. You think Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is one of the great works of art of its epoch. You think Frank the Tank is a role model for a generation. And now, you think that Ricky Bobby is the greatest thing to happen to NASCAR since the drunken women fans in tube tops.

Talladega Nights is the sort of romp we have come to expect from Ferrell. While it may not sustain for a full hour-and-a-half, it has moments of sublimely absurd brilliance, and the first hour moves at a sustained high level. the movie walks that line of being parodic without being condescending, taking on the absurdities of the NASCAR subculture while at the same time managing to provide a pretty darned good advertisement for NASCAR. Product placements are ubiquitous, but the movie is self-aware enough to make that part of the joke while taking the benefits to the bank.

Ferrell is surrounded by a great supporting cast, including the always-on John C. Reilly as Ricky Bobby's best friend, Cal Naughton (great NASCAR name, that), and Sasha Baron Cohen who makes yet another quirkily gutbusting turn, this time as a gay, uniquely accented French Formula One driver, Jean Girard, who comes across the pond to dominate NASCAR and in so doing to challenge crew member-turned-driver extraordinaire Ricky Bobby, who always either wins or crashes. Eventually there is a schism between Cal and Ricky, who sees a rapid downfall along the lines of that which led to one of the great lines in recent movie history in Anchorman: "Milk was a bad choice."

The movie fast devolves into formula, in part involving daddy issues that provide much fodder for humor but also space for treacle, but it's a pretty good formula. The last half hour or so is typical of the genre. All but the most courageous comedies (Wedding Crashers, say) tend to feel the need to wrap up the plot with a feel good ending. Call it the Adam Sandler syndrome. Talladega Nights does not escape this phenomenon, but as a general rule, we do not attend these movies for the resolution, which is incidental, but rather for the buildup. Talladega Nights kicks into high gear from the outset and rarely lets off the throttle. And yes, I wrote that sentence wholly in hopes of being blurbed.

EDITED: For My Being an Idiot