Homogenised, cheeseburger crap.

Rating: 3/10 (13 October 2006)

Talladega Nights is so crudely manufactured and tacked together that if it were a real NASCAR it would break down before even leaving the factory. Adam McKay and Will Ferrell try their hardest to make the movie work but there is simply not enough mileage in the paper-thin concept to stretch over 108 minutes.
The only people this film is likely to appeal to are NASCAR fans themselves. I don't find anything particularly interesting about a bunch of generic, advertisement-covered vehicles circling a big oval 200 times. I honestly don't see what the appeal is. The movie only exists to cash in on the current, inexplicable NASCAR craze and as another excuse to have Will Ferrell run around in his underwear. Even if the racing were exciting it would justify its existence but it is all done so flatly and amateurish you'd be forgiving for thinking you're just watching some random traffic shots. Even uber-trash Days of Thunder didn't fail in this department.
There are a few laughs here and there, mainly from Reese Bobby, Ricky's transient, pot-dealing father, played by Gary Cole (that's the voice of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, folks). But the one thing that almost ruins the entire movie (not hard considering how poor it is anyway) is Sascha Baron Cohen's misjudged, stilted, woefully unfunny performance as a gay Formula One driver. He's just absolutely horrible and every scene with him is painful to watch.
In the end TN:TBORB simply cannot escape the Deus Ex Machina ending you've seen coming from minute one or any other tiresome, clichéd plot mechanics. And it's just not worth your hard earned pennies to laugh only 5 times in 2 hours in between endless bad jokes and boring fast cars. Go play Skalectrix or something.