When all else fails, run around in your underwear...

Rating: 2/10 (13 August 2006)

The best moments in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," belong to under-appreciated character actor Gary Cole (who played Mike Brady in both "Brady Bunch" movies, a sinister thief in "A Simple Plan," and a malevolent sheriff on the TV series "American Gothic"), who not only treats the material with a gleefully smug sarcasm, but also provides the only whiff of successful comic timing in this NASCAR-wreck of a comedy.
Either I have a knee-jerk resistance to movies featuring the blowhard cast members of "Saturday Night Live" and am missing out on nuggets of comedic genius that infiltrate the multiplexes once every month or so, or I'm becoming too snobby for my overgrown film-snob shoes. Whatever the case may be, the recent rash of kitchen-sink comedies featuring performers either obnoxious or charming tend to be largely hit-or-miss affairs. In the best-case scenario, a majority of the gags hit home ("The 40-Year Old Virgin"); on a less successful level are films whose high energy compensates for the margin of misfired gags ("Team America," "Anchorman"); and beneath that lies "Talladega Nights," a film that (snobby) professors of sociology and psychology might unearth 50 years from now to display as a symbol of everything that was wrong with the American sensibility toward things, circa 2006. But wait...maybe that's what star/co-writer Will Ferrell is aiming for! Firing shots at an American Past Time that is quickly eclipsing Major League Baseball, a satirical foray into the world of NASCAR seems like a no-brainer (literally); a scenario so broad that the comedic possibilities are endless. And while he's prone to grating on my nerves in large doses, Will Ferrell has proved gifted in the realm of comedic excess with his retro-behind-the-scenes news send-up, "Anchorman." While I wasn't chomping at the bit to see "Talledega Nights," I can't say I wasn't a little intrigued at its potential.
But for all its attempts to gross us out and make us bust a gut, "Talladega Nights" is an incredibly pedestrian comedy. For the most part, this tale of the titular superstar NASCAR racer (Ferrell) who suffers a particularly un-funny trauma (he wrecks, and runs around under the delusion that he's been set aflame, when he hasn't) only to rise up and compete against a corporate-competitor Frenchman (Sacrebleu! the French are traitors and wussies in post-9/11 America!) is trying to be a sappy, inspirational movie as much as it's trying to be a send-up of sappy, inspirational movies. We have the corporate flunky who sets Ricky up for a fall; the wackily eclectic pit crew; the cheating-whore trophy wife; the precocious children who yell and swear; the best buddy who shares with Ricky a really stupid catchphrase ("Shake n' bake!"); and the quietly inhibited girl who turns into a purring love interest for our hero. The jokes come quick and dirty, from every which direction--but the satirical possibility of the material seems completely lost on the filmmakers, thus transforming "Talladega Nights" into just another undistinguished pile of misfired comedic excess. (By comparison, a "Trekkies"-style mockumentary targeting NASCAR would have elicited more laughs.)
The half-dozen or so laughs I did derive from "Talladega" came courtesy of Cole's hilarious portrayal of Ricky's hard-drinking father, whose unorthodox methods of re-affirming his son's crushed spirit consist of driving blindfolded and with a cougar, among other things. And there's also a great scene involving the removal of a knife plunged into a thigh with another knife. Otherwise, this is a most unspectacular pit stop...but then again, maybe I'm the one who's missing out here...and if that's so, I don't feel the least bit bad about it.