Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Will Ferrel like many comedians has found his groove. picked something, a style or persona he's good at and started churning out money making summer hits. More power to him. Carrey did it in the 90s, Sandler has them too. It's a basic format, reminds me of that south park episode where cartman pretneds to be a robot thinking of new adam sandler movies "adam sandler, meets this girl, but shes a tree" "adam sandler is a rich guy who learns lesson of life". Much to this theory i've heard to sell it too distributers Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was pitched as "will ferrel is a NASCAR driver" and they got the deal on that alone. As i say, if they can do it, fair enough. Will ferrel's movies have a running theme too, he is usually a dumb guy at top of his chosen field who has a sudden decline and is bettered (Anchorman , Talladega Nights).

So with that said the narrative of Talladega Nights, is that Will ferrel is Ricky bobby, successful NASCAR driver who is top of his game :). With his best friend and driving partner Cal Naughton, Jr. (played by John C. Reilly) rule the NASCAR world. That is untill French Formula One driver Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen) hits the scene. Having also dominated his field, he enters world of NASCAR in hope Ricky bobby will beat him, so he can prove himself. In meantime, during the fall of ricky his best friend Cal Naughton, Jr. stars affair with ricky bobby's wife and ricky is kicked out of his home. and takes his two sons with him to move in with his mum.

i've seen Ricky Bobby 3 times, once in cinema and twice on DVD. having been huge fan of Anchorman, i had high expectations with this film. i'm happy to say, i really like it. Sport comedy movies are hard to buy into unless you like that sport. Though some can really hit the mark (Happy gilmore, Kingpin and Nacho Libre..yes wrestling is kinda a sport!). A trademark of these movies is the final scenes are of the final contest of this sport being played out. These are very hard to make funny as you have to balence the sport and comedy, enough to get point across (kingpin / Libre did it brilliantly). Talladega Nights also does it, especially the very end result.

Personally some of funniest scenes to me were : the knife scene, the highlander rant, all of Sacha Baron Cohen's scenes, the cugar stuff and Ricky bobby's dad. On negative points, the shake and bake joke gets bit annoying and in general Ferrell's dumb guy thing is little tired after a while, especially when they could have fallen back on Cohen or Reilly. Also, looking at trailers for his new one, Blades of Glory (which i do wanna see) you really get the idea from his character that it might aswell be Ron Burgundy or Ricky, but hell , i still wanna see the movie, so his style is working. oh i do recommend you see his short but movie stealing role in wedding crashers though, which is most different out and out comedy role ive seen him do (excluding elf) The drama aspect of this film with the dad narrative is pretty well excuted and is pretty good on its own right (Gary Cole "office space" is ricky's dad and is brilliant)

All in all i laughed quite a bit, not up to many repeat viewings, no anchorman, but Sacha Baron Cohen is fantastic, Ferrel is funny doing what he does best and its a very fun, acessible movie. gather up some friends and watch it, you'll have a laugh.