Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

5 September 2006 by Keith Collantine

Talladega Nights, the hit American film starring Will Ferrell (Anchorman) as a NASCAR racer who is challenged by a rival driver from Formula One, opens in the UK on September 15th.

Considering the recent defection of Juan Pablo Montoya to NASCAR, and the rumours that Jacques Villeneuve may soon follow him, the timing of the film is remarkably apposite.

But there’s not exactly a rich pedigree of fine motor sport films for it to draw on. So, is it any good?

Being British and being a self-confessed Formula One fan (you have noticed this site’s called F1Fanatic, right?) Talladega Nights is a little tricky to get a handle on. I can’t honestly judge whether it parodies the stereotypes of Formula One we associate with NASCAR fans, or if it plays to them.

For example: Ricky Bobby’s nemesis Jean Girard, played by Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat), is a gay Frenchman who wears sponsorship from Perrier water. (Also, Baron Cohen’s French accent wanders off to Putney every now and then).

Bobby’s best friend Cal Naughton Jnr (John C. Reilly) keeps shouting “Shake and Bake”. I’m not sure why. It’s some kind of seasoning, I believe.

The film suffers from a few major drawbacks. First: there’s not actually very much racing at all. Two sequences bookend the picture but the bulk of material in the middle just feels like Anchorman: NASCAR edition.

Second: the script suffers from catastrophic sense of humour failure. The jokes are there, they just aren’t funny. A couple of them don’t make the trip across the Atlantic very well, but mostly they’re just obvious and witless.

Third: the plot is predictable and you don’t feel any empathy with any of the characters. I spent a good portion of the film wondering if I was supposed to be rooting for Cal Naughton, but that character proved as much a meritless imbecile as the rest of them.

Before going to see Talladega Nights I really didn’t want to just slate it. I don’t care for NASCAR racing much but motor sport films are rare enough to be interesting in their own right. In recent years we’ve had this and Sylvester Stallone’s abject Driven (about Champ Car racing, originally supposed to be about F1).

You might get some kicks out of Talladega Nights in a ’so bad it’s good’ kind of way. You might find the ‘what NASCAR fans think of F1′ dimension interesting. But I can’t recommend it otherwise.

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