Viking Night: Talladega Nights
By Bruce Hall
February 16, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In your face, Lincoln.
But Reese Bobby (Gary Cole) is a forward thinking man, who knows it’s not enough to bring your son into the world in such an awesomely irresponsible way. He knows that remaining a constant, positive part of his son’s life would make the boy weak and spoiled. What makes great men what they are is a desperate, lifelong search for something to fill the gaping hole where a father’s love should be. Ricky’s search takes him to NASCAR, where he and childhood friend Cal Naughton, Jr. (John C Reilly) work a very motley pit crew.
One day a driver throws in the towel mid race, and Ricky Bobby volunteers to get behind the wheel. Of course he’s a natural, and the next thing you know, Ricky and Cal are the two hottest drivers in the sport. It’s the tried and true “rise-fall-redemption” arc that’s pretty common to sports movies, biopic and satire alike. Talladega Nights kind of tries to have it both ways, with varied results. More than just a satirical biopic, the story of Ricky Bobby is also an attempt at cultural humor - right down to the main character’s name.
But it’s not just Red State culture that’s ripe for the picking. Sports culture, corporate culture, and even success and the fragile family dynamic itself are ripe for the picking. There’s an unscrupulous promoter and his perpetually drunken middle aged wife (characters you can find in every sport, by the way), and we’re reminded, on many occasions, that all French people are snooty and gay. There are a lot of valid targets here, and Talladega Nights makes relentless hay of them, all of the time. Yes there’s a story here and yes, it’s pretty generic. But whatever interest you might have in it is diluted by the film’s tendency to constantly wink and mug, as though it’s not as confident in itself as it wants you to believe.
What we’re left with is a movie that’s funny, but not as much or as often as it tries to be. It’s interesting, but only in spots. It bogs down every few minutes trying to make sure you understand that a grown man is running around in his underwear, or that Ricky is kind of dumb. And each time it happens it goes on so long that you all but forget what the point of the joke was. Adam McKay has directed other movies that also suffer from this problem (Anchorman, Step Brothers), but the common denominator they have is Will Ferrell. Ferrell is a hilarious guy, but it’s not beyond wondering whether being such a big star, people find it hard to tell him when the timer on a gag is up, and it’s best to move on.
But hey, it happened to Mel Brooks, George Lucas and Woody Allen. Sometimes you get so big that nobody can tell you when to walk away from a scene. It happens. The flip side is that despite the bumpy ride, the performances in Talladega Nights manage to redeem most of it. The satire doesn’t always land but the movie knows its targets well. John C. Reilly should have a standing best supporting actor nomination for everything he’s in. Drama, comedy, you name it - he’s money every time. And when he exercises restraint, Ferrell himself strikes the appropriate tone between “loveable doofus” and “self-absorbed mega douche”.
Sacha Baron Cohen is the kind of genius I can respect even when I hate what he’s doing. In fact he’s more than merely an antagonist - Jean Girard is the walking embodiment of every negative French stereotype that ever spewed forth from an Alabama trailer park in the dead of night. In the hands of a lesser talent, this might have been intolerable, but in the end this is another master stroke of casting that makes the movie better - so much better - than it should be. I’m not sure Gary Cole was even acting so much as he was getting paid to not take a shower and walk around with a beer being a dick for three months.
And the joy comes out in his performance.
I guess we can’t talk about a racing movie without talking about the races, can we? If you’re going to make a NASCAR movie, there need to be some races, and by that I do NOT mean the “guys driving uneventfully in circles” kind of racing you see on TV. You know how ESPN never shows racing highlights unless there’s a crash? For a film like this, every race should be an over-the-top CGI recreation of a Speed channel highlight reel - and for the most part they are. Watching an auto race is a little like watching golf - it’s a lot more fun to DO than it is to WATCH, so in a movie, you want to punch up those scenes as much as possible.
Maybe not quite to Days of Thunder levels, but enough to make it fun. In that regard, Talladega Nights nails it, and sticks the landing with flair. Maybe French drivers don’t really listen to classical music and drink macchiato while they drive, but you KNOW they probably do. The racing is exciting, the crashes are spectacular, and you almost forget how boring it is in real life. I believe I even counted cameos from actual drivers, although the only one I recognized was Dale Junior, and the only reason I recognize him is from all those Mountain Dew commercials.
Which reminds me - Talladega Nights has a lot of fun with product placement, which we all know is ubiquitous in racing. But it’s also pretty common in smug Hollywood comedies that want to make fun of corporate America while still staying firmly attached to that sweet, golden teat. The result is scene after scene where the movie attempts to be simultaneously subversive and corporate. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s supposed to be meta, or is just a stupid, obvious lie designed for anyone too dumb to see that you can’t make fun of a Taco Bell endorsement without getting an actual endorsement from Taco Bell.
Talladega Nights is essential viewing if you enjoy satire in general, or Will Ferrell movies in particular. Or, if you’re just bored and have enough time to sit through a slightly uneven comedy that’s about 15 minutes too long and are sure you won’t hate yourself for that later. If that’s you, then have at it, and take my word for it that you won’t be disappointed (much).
The Ballad of Ricky Bobby isn’t quite the home run it thinks it is, but it’s maybe a two base hit, and it has enough genuine laugh out loud moments that I can’t in good conscience say that it doesn’t work. And if it sounds like I struggle to give it even such faint praise, just sit through it. You’ll see. It’s good, but not great - just funny enough not to regret. And now that you can see it for free, I guess there’s no reason not to combine it with one of Taco Bell’s many (allegedly) delicious menu options and enjoy.