Funny! Overall the Best Movie This Summer

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2006)

"Talladega Nights" is genuinely funny, and the best movie I've seen this summer. That's kind of sad when you consider that this is just meant to be a fluffy little comedy and leaden bores like "The Da Vinci Code" were meant to be serious entertainment.
But "Talladega Nights" has consistent characterizations, a coherent, if goofy, script, and fine performances all around. As far as craft goes, this comedy is better made than the "serious" films out there.
Will Ferrell is a comic genius; John C. Reilly gets his share of laughs; Sasha Baron Cohen is hysterical -- just to look at him is to laugh - as a French race car driver who wants to retire to design currency to be used by dogs and cats. Gary Cole, as Reese Bobby, Will Ferrell's shiftless, low life, beer drinking father, is one of the most interesting characterizations in the summer's films, and laugh out loud funny.
I wonder about the film's stereotyping of Southerners; Hey, you Southerners out there -- did you feel offended by this movie? And, yet, I laughed.
Unlike other recent comedies, there are few to no gross out scenes here. No use of bodily fluids in attempts at humor.