Will Farrell gets fast and curious.
"If you ain't first, you're last," Reese Bobby tells his son, Ricky, who was born in a speeding car. He shares this wisdom when he gets kicked out of Ricky's school on Career Day, after
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years of absence. And then he disappears on Ricky again.
Even though the no-good, no-job Reese (Gary Cole) doesn't even remember giving this advice during a
reunion with a grown Ricky (Will Ferrell)-"That don't even make sense. You could be second, you could be third..."-it doesn't really matter. Ricky already has
had a love of speed and hunger to win implanted in what serves as his brain. He becomes a member of a NASCAR pit crew, and when the opportunity comes up, midrace, to substitute for a lazy driver,
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
begins. (Actually, it begins with a quote about America's need for "hot, nasty, badass speed"-attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.)
Directed by Adam McKay and co-written by McKay and Ferrell-the matchup responsible for
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
-
Talladega Nights
exists mainly to 1) get Ferrell back on, uh, track (sorry) and 2) make fun of white-trash NASCAR lovers. The premise is pretty thin, but the filmmakers get a fair amount of, um, mileage (sorry again) out of it. Ricky wins that first race and becomes the "It" driver,
marrying a glaringly blond trophy wife, Carley (Leslie Bibb), naming their two boys Walker and Texas Ranger and staying true to his grade-school best friend, Cal (John C Reilly), all while lovin'
America.
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It doesn't take long for
Talladega Nights
to get the stereotypes of its target out of the way: Ricky's car is sponsored by Wonder Bread, his family eats a buffet of fast food every night, Skynyrd's king, foreigners are weird, etc. The subject's a softball, but Ferrell's vaguely Dubya-accented shtick makes it work for a while, whether Ricky is timidly giving his first on-the-track interview or later brashly making commercials for any and all products ("I'm Ricky Bobby, and if you don't chew Big Red, then fuck you"). Among the broadness are a couple of subtler jokes, such as Ricky's answer to the question of why his rival, the French Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Ali G), came here: "Public schools? The health-care system?" But mostly, it's all beer and balls.
A long segment in which Ricky loses his touch lags, saved only by Jane Lynch as Ricky's mother and Amy Adams as Susan, Ricky's manager and eventual love interest. Unlike
Anchorman
, these blander moments suffer from a lack of cameos from the usual Ferrell clan of Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Steve Carell. After descending from full-on laughs to forced giggles Ferrell and McKay successfully resuscitate the audience with never-fail outtakes that should leave you happier than a celebration dinner at Applebee's.
