An amusing satire that leans slightly to the left...

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2006)

If you're hoping to see the Nascar culture of the South (and midwest)mercilessly skewered, this movie will not satisfy your liberal bloodlust. It does lean a little left, but ultimately it's not picking sides and is a funny film that even intelligent people can enjoy.
Will and crew have good comic timing, and Will somehow once again channels his idiot man- child character in a way that makes you actually care about him. Jane Lynch is awesome in Guest mockumentaries, but is wasted here. Leslie Bibb is dead on as the gold-digging bombshell and Amy Adams nails her inspiring monologue although her character is clearly tacked on. John C. keeps pace with the zaniness of Will F. and has many of the funniest lines. Michael Clarke Duncan is there as the token bait for African Americans. He is not given much to work with, and the whole second knife thing is a bit insulting (although funny). Gary Cole is funny and believable.
You're not going to laugh until you cry, but you will laugh often. The film tries to make fun of product placement with product placement which kind of sort of works. It's a bit like Fight Club pretending to be anti-Hollywood... not really convincing. The soundtrack is well chosen especially at the end, and the movie has by far the best on screen kiss in recent memory that actually makes you feel hopeful for the future of the country.
The only negatives for me were the annoying children. Once again the tired, "make kids say foul things" trick was used, and it still isn't funny. Luckily Jane Lynch comes to the rescue, and I heard several cheers from the audience when the childish antics are silenced.
As usual, there are several extremely low reviews on the site posted by people who have clearly not seen the movie. Some of them even cut and paste the same vague sentence over and over to make the minimum word limit. Now that's laziness. Just to make it clear, the n- word is never uttered, there is no anti-Semitism, no nudity, and there are only a few raunchy jokes (mostly erection related). For Tom Cruise's sake, The Naked Gun is more offensive than this film.
The real reason this movie inspires hatred, is that it is effective as a satire of the absurdity of both the ultra-male, Christian-lite homophobic Nascar culture (the fainting from the gayness scene cracked me up), and the over the top extreme-left, pseudo-cultured in your face liberal credo.
The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is not fall out of your chair funny, and it's not as awesome as Highlander, but it's miles and miles better than the atrocious Wedding Crashers and is surprisingly well made for a Hollywood comedy. Everyone in the audience (except for a couple people who were clearly waaaaaaay too sensitive about Jesus) had a good time.