Directed by Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Gary Cole, Michael Clarke Duncan, Leslie Bibb, Jane Lynch, Amy Adams, Molly Shannon, Greg Germann, Andy Richter, Pat Hingle, Houston Tumlin, Grayson Russell, David Koechner, Jake Johnson, Austin Crimm, Frank Hoyt Taylor, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Elvis Costello, Mos Def
While I enjoyed the delirious �Anchorman,� the film couldn�t hold itself together long enough for greatness. �Talladega Nights� corrects many of the comedy problems that plagued �Anchorman,� and speeds off to become one of the funniest films of the year.
All his life, Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) has wanted to drive fast and win races. After getting his chance to prove himself as a driver on the NASCAR circuit, Bobby thunders to the number one spot and stays there: raking in the riches, marrying a hot blonde (Leslie Bibb), and relying on the undying friendship of pal Cal (John C. Reilly). When a French driver named Jean Girard (the sublime Sacha Baron Cohen, better known to the world as Ali G and Borat) swoops in and steals Bobby�s glory, the confused champ must restart his life at the bottom. Starved for inspiration, Bobby seeks the help of his friends and his deadbeat dad (Gary Cole) to climb back into the driver�s seat and race again.
This is how you want Will Ferrell. After a year or so of being bewitched or trying to beef up his dramatic chops, Ferrell returns to the playground of freefalling hilarity that he was born for. No pretension, no career ambition, just Ferrell with the pedal to the metal.
�Talladega Nights� builds on what Ferrell and director/cohort Adam McKay were trying to do with their 2004 runaway fire hose �Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.� The duo crave absurdist comedy, and their first endeavor was irrefutably hilarious, but it was an exceedingly messy affair that allowed too many camera hog actors the freedom to do whatever they pleased for as long as they could. It was an overstuffed film that ultimately deflated under McKay�s lenient control.
However, it�s all been corrected for �Talladega Nights;� McKay and Ferrell have taken two steps back for this NASCAR-themed comedy, and the restraint shows. Sure, there�s still the goofy stuff. For instance: to get back his racing mojo, Bobby must learn to drive with a live cougar in his car, which fills him with pants-wetting fear (he also doesn�t want his treasured Crystal Gayle t-shirt ripped); and to announce his presence to Bobby�s all-American racing team, Girard selects some jazz off the jukebox, which makes the squad confused, afraid, and sick to their stomachs from this alien sound.
McKay keeps every joke within reach, and there�s a fenced in quality to the humor in �Talladega� that helps it reach the finish line. The picture makes room for a delicious lampooning of NASCAR idiosyncrasies (the production gets a lot of mileage out of outlandish corporate sponsorship), redneck childhood liberties, and the idea of a French gay man in a predominately testosterone-drenched sport. Ferrell and McKay display a sense of delight with Ricky Bobby�s insular worldview, and this film has an appealing gentle rumble to it. Rarely is any joked shoved into the audiences� faces, and the story, as silly as it gets, is adhered to in ways that make �Anchorman� resemble a box of spilled Legos. This is a tighter, focused directing job by McKay, and he ends up with a better film for his effort.
The bottom line is this: the flick is hilarious, and should end up one of the funniest films of the year. Just to see Will Ferrell back to fighting shape is enough to recommend the film, but the production stepped up and created a comedic competitive world that�s irresistible. And they achieved the unthinkable: they made NASCAR look fun.
``Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" is the sort of cheerfully asinine comedy that twists your arm until you submit. So, to Will Ferrell -- clown, freak, bully -- I scream, ``Uncle!" Ferrell co-wrote ``Talladega Nights" with the director Adam McKay. They also made 2003's TV news farce ``Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" together, and that arbitrarily amusing escapade was a warm-up for the more confident shenanigans they inflict on us here. The movie isn't a mean-spirited rag on NASCAR or its fans, though. It's a goof on the macho corniness of the racing movie.
Ferrell plays Ricky Bobby, a witless pit crewman who becomes a NASCAR superstar after his driver goes cuckoo. Fame does not improve Ricky's intelligence -- he and his trashy Dixie-chick wife (Leslie Bibb) name their sons Walker and Texas Ranger in praise of the old Chuck Norris show -- but it does afford the movie a chance to build a number of daffy sequences around the excesses the sport affords him.
The first 20 minutes come on fast and easy, whisking us from Ricky's speed-obsessed childhood to his sudden celebrity. There's the marriage, a few hilarious TV spots, fake interviews, a Motley Cr�e song, and the tickling sight of Ricky driving a Wonder Bread-sponsored car. But the movie's been made with a surprisingly risky rhythm: That introductory blitz of jokes and gags settles into a single long scene at the Bobby family dinner table. Ricky tells us the meal has been sponsored by a certain energy drink, then he blesses the food, and an argument breaks out over which version of Jesus is better.
That meal goes on for several minutes more, and it underscores the noblest thing about ``Talladega Nights": that Ferrell and McKay are determined to see a scene through to its most unnatural conclusion. The dinner, with the tacky wife trying to maintain some order and the young'ns cussing poor grandpa, turns into a surreal set piece. Not much later, there is another at the bar where Ricky and his red-blooded American pals' country-loving good time is ruined by the jazz an accented stranger (Sacha Baron Cohen) plays on the jukebox.
His name is Jean Girard. He's gay, he's French, and he's just been hired to race by the same family that owns Ricky's team. He's capable of reading Camus and sipping wine while he drives, and his boyfriend is a vision of pomposity played by Andy Richter. The knee-jerk homophobia that would usually take over a dude comedy when someone like Jean arrives doesn't really surface. I'm thinking about the nosedives ``Wedding Crashers" took whenever its one gay character popped into view.
``Talladega Nights" is too slaphappy to annoy anybody, however. Cohen, who's better known to HBO subscribers as Ali G, gives Girard so many delightful curlicues (for one thing, his accent is not French; it's Peter Sellers) that the joke he makes of the character has numerous punch lines. One of the funniest shots in the movie is a close-up of Ferrell and Cohen in a nose-to-nose shout-down. You can see both men fighting the urge not to break character and collapse into hysterics.
The movie's generosity extends to nearly the whole cast. John C. Reilly plays Ricky's vividly dumb best friend, and while he's been funny before, I've never hurt laughing at him as I did here. Gary Cole and the unsung Jane Lynch have plum parts as Ricky's parents. Molly Shannon is tart in her few scenes, which, like a lot of moments in ``Talladega Nights," are glorified outtakes. Even Houston Tumlin and Grayson Russell, the two hellions playing Walker and Texas Ranger, are a blast.
Best of all is Amy Adams, that Oscar-nominee from ``Junebug," who here plays Ricky's drab assistant. She spends the movie in thankless group shots, then in one outrageous moment that feels ripped from a speech Nicole Kidman gave Tom Cruise in ``Days of Thunder," she comes to magic, comic life.
Naturally, the fleet, effortless marvels of the first 60 or so minutes prove unsustainable. After Ricky has a career-altering accident, the film becomes a lower-energy movie-of-the-week riff. This patch does produce one stellar hospital scene between Ferrell and Michael Clarke Duncan, as Ricky's pit-crew chief. Ferrell thinks he's paralyzed, Duncan tries to talk some sense into him, and the two men wind up tearfully screaming at each other in high Oscar-clip fashion.
A nonsense encounter like that is what makes ``Talladega Nights" so appealing. Not only is it the first comedy since ``The 40-Year-Old Virgin" that's been made with an improvisatory spirit and a degree of respect for an audience, it's also bravely poised on the fine edge between hilarity and disaster. Much of the credit belongs to Ferrell, who sets the picture's tone and is smart enough to surround himself with people who can follow his lead.
In the wrong hands (Nora Ephron's or Woody Allen's), Ferrell looks foolish because the directors are too in awe of his gangbusters style -- that or his status as a box-office lure. McKay, who was also a writer on ``Saturday Night Live," seems to have Ferrell's wild nature mostly under control. This is not to say the comedian doesn't go crazy. We are treated to the riotous, almost David Lynchian moment in which Ferrell runs around a motorway in his undies screaming that he's on fire. He's not. Actually, come to think of it: He is.
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" opens with an outrageous quote made all the more absurd when it purports to have been said by Eleanor Roosevelt. It's the funniest moment of the film, and nary a frame of actual footage has yet been glimpsed. From there, it's all downhill for writer-director Adam McKay and actor-cowriter Will Ferrell, who last teamed up in 2004 for the tonally identical, similarly scattershot "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." This latest movie takes a comedic page from serious biopics and a one-note idea�Ferrell as a NASCAR racer�but doesn't have the focus or drive to bring it home. More often than not, "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" crashes and burns as it tries to garner laughs out of poorly edited and decidedly threadbare material.
The son of now-estranged parents�doting mother Lucy (Jane Lynch) and deadbeat father Reese (Gary Cole)�who conceived of him in a roadside cafe bathroom, Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) grows up to be a professional NASCAR competitor at the top of his game. As conceited and fame-hungry as he is, Ricky would seem to have it all�loads of money, great success, an adoring best friend and second-banana racer Cal Naughton, Jr. (John C. Reilly), a beautiful trophy wife Carley (Leslie Bibb), and two sons named Walker (Houston Tumlin) and Texas Ranger (Grayson Russell). In an instant, almost all of it is taken away from him following a nasty car wreck that leaves him too psychologically scarred to race. Carley, a golddigger determined to never have to work, promptly divorces Ricky, marries Cal, and takes his mansion. Stuck living back at home with his mother, it will take a miracle for Ricky to get back in the driver's seat and reclaim the NASCAR title he has worked his whole life for.
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" is a threadbare comedy with a sorry hit-to-miss laugh ratio of about 1-to-25. The gags are thrown the audience's way at a swift rate, but the majority of them are embarrassingly amateurish and predictable rather than clever. There are, of course, a few humdingers�when Carley's father chastises Walker and Texas Ranger for being mouthy and rude, she replies, "If we'd have wanted them to be sissies, we would have named them Dr. Quinn and Medicine Woman"�but they are few and far between.
The rest of the running time is made up of long dry spots, exaggerated characterizations straight out of a sketch show, and a plastic storyline made all the more insufferably artificial by a lead character who is no more likable or worthy of triumph than the "bad guys" that surround him. In "Anchorman," Ron Burgundy was like Ricky Bobby in his steadfast self-absorption, but little by little grew as a person. In comparison, if Ricky turns into a better man by the end, his transformation is neither well conveyed nor believably fashioned. Director Adam McKay tries to explain this away by making him the victim of a father who abandoned him as a baby and returns years later just as unreliable as he ever was, but that doesn't exactly help to make Ricky Bobby an ingratiating presence.
The cast is solid, but arguably too good for the wasted parts they receive. Will Ferrell (2005's "Bewitched") leads the way as the title character, but his same old shtick has begun to repeat itself to the point of nausea. He mugs his way through each scene and elicits more groans than deserved chuckles from his over-the-top portrayal. Great character actor John C. Reilly (2006's "A Prairie Home Companion") is forgettable as Ricky's underappreciated pal Cal. Leslie Bibb (2000's "The Skulls") has got the shallow role of Carley down pat�there's a sly moment where she tearfully tells the doctor she is ready to pull the plug on Ricky, despite him not even being in critical condition�but there is hardly any signs of humanity behind her backstabbing exterior. As Ricky's mousy-assistant-turn-love-interest Susan, Amy Adams (recent Oscar nominee for 2005's "Junebug") is criminally underutilized. The invaluable Molly Shannon (2006's "Little Man") gets some cute moments as the boozy wife of team owner Larry Dennit, Jr. (Greg Germann). And finally, Sacha Baron Cohen (2005's "Madagascar") brings a quirky sniveling originality to Jean Girard, Ricky's very French and very gay top competitor.
Comedy is a tricky genre to get right. Not only does the writing have to be sharp, but the timing has to be perfect in order for the jokes to work their intended magic. It also helps that the story and characters carry the humor along with a core rooting interest in how things are going to play out. "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" rarely succeeds at any of these things. For a film about NASCAR�even one that isn't supposed to be taken seriously�the racing sequences are confusingly pieced together to the point of incomprehensibility, switching between exterior shots of cars going around the track with close-ups of drivers that never actually look like they're driving. Thus, the viewer not only doesn't care about Ricky Bobby, but any tension these scenes might have otherwise had is muted by poor editing.
Will Ferrell is a funny fellow�look no further than his years of work on "Saturday Night Live" and in such charmers as 2003's "Elf"�but he isn't funny here and frequently seems to be stretching to make the lame material appear better than it is. He gives it a fighting try, but might as well not have. "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" is a hopelessly routine and vapid misfire.
A Bush-era film if there ever was one, it�s hard to imagine Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby receiving the green light a decade ago. Or if it did, it certainly wouldn�t be the same movie. Its villain, for example, is Bill O�Reilly�s worst nightmare: Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen, absolutely hysterical), a gay Frenchman with an affinity for jazz, existentialism and classic literature. He�s also a stock-car driver, so his presence is infringing on that most sacred of blue-blooded, middle-American sports, personified by Will Ferrell�s titular NASCAR superstar. Ricky Bobby�s xenophobia and isolationist logic are frighteningly like W.�s, but both he and Girard are cartoons. The film takes an equal amount of inspired comic jabs at both sides of the cultural divide, as well as NASCAR tropes like the ravenous fan base and the ubiquity of corporate advertising. Gary Cole and John C. Reilly add hilarious gusto as Ricky�s white-trash father and second-fiddle companion, respectively, who provide countless moments of unexpectedly fresh wit thanks to the improv-conducive environment established by director Adam McKay (Anchorman) and co-producer Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin). NASCAR has long been ripe for parody, and even if Talladega Nights occasionally undercuts its satiric comments by genuinely celebrating the race sequences, this cultural phenomenon receives a scathingly funny treatment.
Two years ago, Will Ferrell had his biggest critical hit with a razor-sharp comedy called "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," which deftly satirized the '70s, television news and the superegotism of one empty-headed broadcast personality.
With "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," Ferrell once again joins forces with writer-director Adam McKay for a similar satire of sports movies, the ever-growing phenomenon of NASCAR racing and the egotism of one empty-headed Southern driver.
This time the model works even better. Like most extended sketch comedies, this one can't quite sustain itself for a feature length, but for two-thirds of its running time it's hilarious. It is Ferrell's best movie and the summer's funniest comedy so far.
Taking the form of a farcical biopic, it starts with the early life of its hero: his birth in the back seat of a moving car, his obsession with speed as a toddler, his no-good father (Gary Cole) ingraining him with the lesson that winning is everything.
In a quick leap, he's a NASCAR star, with the ultimate trophy wife (Leslie Bibb), a nation of fawning fans and $20 million in endorsements. But he loses it all when his nerve is shaken in a smash-up and his supremacy is challenged by a gay French Formula One driver (Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G).
As it goes through the cliched paces of the sports-movie formula -- and makes mincemeat of them -- the film's weakest element is its subplot with the French driver, which is filled out with a string of bashing gags that don't quite fly.
Otherwise, the film comes together to be a dead-on satire of a movie genre, an expert comedy of character and an almost perfect vehicle for Ferrell, who shines in a half-dozen or more of the most elaborately crafted and howlingly funny routines he's ever concocted.
But Ferrell is not the whole show. Always generous as a star, he allows the rest of the cast -- John C. Reilly as his best friend; Jane Lynch as his mother; even the actors playing his two kids -- to have some of the film's best scenes. Rare for a star vehicle, this is a true ensemble comedy.
Even more surprising, director McKay -- in the midst of all the anarchy -- manages to capture the white-knuckle appeal of NASCAR. Though they're done for comedic effect (the hero wins one race in reverse), his racing scenes are not just thrown away. There's genuine excitement to them, and "Talladega" works as a cockeyed action movie.
First "My Name Is Earl," now "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." It's only taken about 30 years, but redneck comedy has finally smartened up.
Will Ferrell's NASCAR spoof ain't aerodynamic engineering by a long shot, but it is shrewdly uproarious at a mentally engaged speed that "Smokey and the Bandit" movies never clocked. Ferrell's second outing with co-writer/director Adam McKay also beats their previous "Anchorman" in its generally bright take on dumb behavior.
Mainly, though, the jokes are just plain funnier than they usually are in these things. And there's a consistent satirical edge that's pretty wicked; God, family, runaway commercialization and other values red-state Americans supposedly hold sacred are mercilessly skewered. Yet there's a good-natured vibe to it all and, in a weird way, the movie's as inclusive as the day is long. No wonder NASCAR cooperated with this production that makes fun of the organization's many absurdities; it might just attract whole new demographic groups to the ravenous sports-entertainment empire.
As for the core stock-car audience, only a really bad good ol' boy could fail to chuckle at "Talladega's" dang-near brilliant caricatures. Pacing this pack is Ferrell's title driver, a born-to-rev type whose success on the track has led to an ego as massive as it is down-home natural. With just enough of a Southern drawl and rich emotional impulsiveness, Ferrell doesn't exactly create a believable human being, but this is definitely his most faceted and challenging big-screen comic creation to date.
Ricky's childhood friend and team partner Cal's (John C. Reilly, impeccably dim-bulbing it) pleas to actually be allowed to win a race for a change fall on his buddy's ever-loyal but deaf ears. The champ's Dixie peacock wife, Carley ("Crossing Jordan's" Leslie Bibb), is his biggest, most supportive fan � as long as he comes in first.
Their two foul-mouthed boys, Walker and Texas Ranger Bobby (Houston Tumlin and Grayson Russell), are hilarious examples of country brat entitlement. And Ricky's dissolute dad, Reese Bobby (Gary Cole), is a shining beacon of bad, hot-rod hillbilly role modeling.
Yup, Ricky's living the Middle American dream, all right. But it all crashes around him when a gay French Formula One (or, as he says it, "Une") interloper, Jean Girard, blows Ricky off the track.
Played in what is, surprisingly, one of the film's least-funny performances by "Ali G" alter ego Sacha Baron Cohen, Jean represents everything red-blooded Yanks � and Rebs � should fear and hate.
Cohen's shtick, however, just isn't as cleverly worked out as Ricky's. The former reads Camus while driving at 200 miles per hour, while our man can riff for five minutes saying the most bizarrely argumentative grace that's ever preceded a fast-food feast.
Anyway, Ricky hits rock bottom, and the part of the film that charts his road to recovery runs into a few slow patches. But this isn't too bothersome, as it's also where the movie's surprisingly thoughtful theme � that the drive to win can be just as destructive as it is rewarding � gains traction. And besides, any lost momentum is recovered at the climactic, ridiculous and yet inspired Talladega race.
By the way, a lot of the racing footage was shot at actual speedway events. I don't know if a movie like this needs that kind of realism, but it certainly doesn't hurt.
'What does diablo mean?'' ''It's like Spanish for fighting chicken.'' If you cracked so much as a shell of a smile reading that, then run, don't walk, to see Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, where you will get an entire year's worth of equally irresistible nonsense.
The second collaboration between actor Will Ferrell and his Anchorman director/co-writer Adam McKay has a lot in common with that previous film: Both are largely ad-libbed, aggressively silly comedies about the rise and fall of a doofus who happens to be a star at what he does. In the previous film, it was TV news; in the new movie, it's NASCAR racing.
The main difference between the two pictures is that Talladega Nights feels like a real movie where Anchorman felt like a feature-length skit. It's not just that the race-car backdrop is more fertile territory for humor than the tired 1970s period setting of Anchorman: It is also that Ferrell and the rest of the actors have been given actual characters to play this time, so even when entire scenes are taken over by improvisational riffs, they don't come off as self-indulgent.
Ferrell often seems constrained and ill-at-ease when acting in traditional comedies such as Bewitched or Melinda and Melinda: He needs the loose and anarchic framework Talladega Nights provides to do his best work. And the character of Ricky undergoes enough transformations over the course of the film -- from smug and selfish superstar to dethroned has-been to humbled comeback hopeful -- to allow Ferrell to play a wide spectrum of idiocy. His shtick never grows tiresome, because it's constantly changing.
And although there is nothing in the movie that ever asks to be taken seriously, Talladega Nights musters up genuine sweetness, whether it's the bond between Ricky and his inseparable pal Cal (John C. Reilly), who will do anything for Ricky -- until he decides to steal his wife, his kids and his home -- or Ricky's relationship with his long-absent father (Gary Cole), who returns to help his disgraced son overcome his post-crash fear of driving by locking a cougar in his front seat.
The movie also gets a considerable boost of energy from Sacha Baron Cohen's performance as the flamboyantly snooty French driver Jean Girard, who never pronounces Ricky Bobby's name the same way twice. Talladega Nights has its share of inevitable dead spots, but that's never for lack of trying on the part of the actors, who often seem to be on the verge of cracking each other up on camera. Unlike Anchorman, though, this time the audience doesn't feel like they've been left out of the joke.
Remember the scenes in Boogie Nights where Dirk Diggler and Reed Rothchild are hanging out, shooting the shit and partying, the sweet awkwardness of their friendship and the manic goofiness of their exchanges? Take away the cocaine that fuelled a lot of that and replace it by sheer stupidity and you get an idea of the wildly enjoyable duo at the heart of "Talladega Nights". John C. Reilly is as fun as he's ever been and Will Ferrell considerably ups the level of comic insanity, no offence to Mark Wahlberg.
Equally hilarious is the interplay between Ferrell's titular NASCAR superstar and his arch-nemesis, Formule Un expat Jean Girard, who's portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, better known as the genius star of "Da Ali G Show" and "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan". Bobby and Girard couldn't be more different: one's a beer-drinking, Baby Jesus-loving American blowhard with a blonde bimbo trophy wife and troublemaking kids named Walker and Texas Ranger; the other's a jazz-loving, Macchiato-drinking, Camus-reading French homosexual who casually entertains the likes of Elvis Costello and Mos Def over brunch!
And that's not all - the central relationship of the film might actually be the one between Ricky and his deadbeat dad Reese (Gary Cole), who gave him his love of speed ("I'm goin' fast!") and his competitive spirit ("If you ain't first, you're last."), even though he has hardly ever been present in his life. You could say Bobby's been winning all these races for his absent father, but don't expect too much sentimentality - this only leads to more over the top silliness.
The plot closely mirrors that of Anchorman, following an incomprehensibly successful macho moron as he falls from grace, hard, then makes a triumphant return to his chosen field. After a spectacular wreck, Ricky Bobby is fired by his race team, dumped by his wife and betrayed by his best friend. Worse, the once unshakable stock car driver is now paralysed by fear and unable to race anymore. Yet with the help of a deceivingly timid girl (Amy Adams), his old man and a cougar (!), our redneck hero will find himself back on the track and ready to take on all comers, starting with that Eurotrash fool.
"Talledaga Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby", while not quite as focused and inspired as Anchorman, still made me laugh as hard and often as any movie in recent memory, and it confirms that Adam McKay is one of the best comedy directors around. We're not talking great mise en sc�ne here, but there's something to be said about the ability to create a climate where performers have the freedom to try out "many improvisational variations of their scripted scenes" (as worded in the press kit), all in the service of making each moment the funniest they can. Mission accomplished.