classic Will Ferrell, but it's not enough

Rating: 4/10 (11 August 2006)

the laughs i had were isolated moments that weren't woven together in any cohesive sense... it was like a string of a hundred unrelated jokes, and most of them were bad. i did laugh, when Ferrell and Cohen were at their best, and when Ricky Bobby's kids went off. i do admit, my laughter spiked when the little kid threatens his grandpa, "I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!" that was good s***.
but the majority of it just didn't fly. the ads were ridiculously overdone, to the point where a full-blown commercial is inserted right at the climax of the final race. i sense that it was supposed to be funny, but it was just really, really annoying. product placement, great, whatever. commercials and multiple undisguised references to bloated, greedy corporations... screw that. i hope Applebee's suffers a consumer backlash, not that i frequent that particular chain.
Ferrell's love interest didn't get enough screen time. when she was on screen, it was painfully obvious that she was just being kept around so that later on the viewer wouldn't be totally disoriented by her reappearance. the wife and the team owner, the "bad guys," didn't have any presence or any good lines; she was just obnoxious, and he had no balls. the Halliburton joke just didn't go anywhere (you guys could've really done something with that).
now that i recall the movie, one thing that was good was the production value. the races really felt like they were happening, which added a lot. so yay, good race scenes. boo, bad jokes.