Talladega Nights (The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby) : Movie Review

I will start off by saying this: I think NASCAR is boring. If I wanted to see a bunch of cars whiz by, I would sit by the freeway. At least people get pulled over on the freeway, and instead of the same 40-odd cars going in circles for hours I could see maybe four thousand. If you’re actually one of those lucky few who have no idea what I’m talking about because you’ve never watched a NASCAR race, I’m going to spoil it for you: The cars turn left.

Now, as you may have gathered from reading my previous posts here, I think a lot of things are stupid. Far be it from me to let my prejudices against, well, almost everything keep me from commenting on a movie. Especially one starring Will Ferrell, Sasha Baron Cohen, John C. Reilly, Gary Cole, and Michael Clarke Duncan. Besides-this movie wins bonus points with me because it actually makes fun of NASCAR.

So, anyways, this major motion picture starts with the birth of our folk hero, Ricky Bobby. It shows he was born in a speeding car, which in movieland translates to a love of speeding cars. Yeah, well, I was born during a flood that prevented anyone from entering or leaving the hospital for 3 days, but I don’t have a yearning to build an ark…It seems we depart from reality early on in this flick.

Skip ahead to Ricky in elementary school…Father has been a no-show until this one fateful day when he shows up for “career day,” drops the advice of “You’re either first or last,” and subsequently gets kicked out of the school for imploring the students to ignore their superiors who “only want you to go slow.” This is what, in the movie industry, we call “foreshadowing.” This advice, as well as his father’s mischievousness and abandonment are the defining motifs in his life as we watch it unfold.

The remainder (and the majority) of the movie takes place with Ricky Bobby as an adult, and focuses on his meteoric rise to the top of the NASCAR circuit, the formation of his racing team, and his marriage before the plot, as it often does, thickens.

Enter Sasha Baron Cohen, playing a gay Formula 1 driver who has, for reasons to be revealed later, decided to enter the NASCAR racing world and challenge Ricky’s title as the ‘King Of Racing.’ At this point, to go on would ruin the rest for you, but if you don’t feel sickened by the VERY loose threads by which the premise of the movie hangs (or by gratuitous displays of gay affection for the sake of comedy), you’ll enjoy the nearly endless string of one-liners and set-up jokes to follow.

As with Ferrell’s ‘Anchorman‘, the story isn’t wholly important to the movie except in that it provides the situations to set up opportunities for the stellar cast to improv some seriously funny shit. All of the aforementioned actors steal scenes from one another, and by the end you don’t end up really caring much about what happens in the progression of the plot or why. It’s all about the jokes in this one, and for that I will say this is a must-see. However, this is a movie that will be remembered best for its quotables that you can spout at the water cooler or while playing beer-pong or whatever, not for the brilliant character development or cinematography.

Buy or no buy (I downloaded this but may eventually buy it…we’ll wait and see), I had a good time watching it and will probably revisit it soon. Of course, I also thought ‘Zoolander‘ was a work of genius…so, let that be your yardstick of my cinematic judgement.