Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) * * *

Directed by:  Adam McKay

Starring:  Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael Clarke Duncan, Amy Adams, Jane Lynch, Gary Cole, Leslie Bibb, Andy Richter, Greg Germann

First, NASCAR was taken with deadly seriousness in 1990's Days of Thunder,  a lame Tom Cruise vehicle.    Now, we have Talladega Nights, which satirizes the world of NASCAR, sports movies, comeback stories, and xenophobia.    You may as well throw in homophobia too.    Talladega Nights brings us into the insane world of Ricky Bobby (Ferrell), the perennial champion driver whose standing is turned upside down by the arrival of Formula One racer Jean Gerard (Cohen), he with the Clouseau-like accent and a husband.     He is everything Ricky Bobby and the NASCAR world detests, but he is quite good at winning races. 

Talladega Nights jumps headlong into Ricky Bobby with confident, manic zeal.    It isn't afraid to be ridiculous and take chances.    The actors are clearly having a great time and this rubs off on the audience.    Ferrell tried the same formula in other films with varying degrees of success, but this one boasts some hilarious supporting performances.    It isn't just Ferrell's show.     Ricky Bobby has it all.   Lots of money, a hot blonde wife (Bibb), two kids named Walker and Texas Ranger (those familiar with the old Chuck Norris series will get a kick out of that), and a mantra of "If you're not first, you're last." 

Things are going well, until Girard arrives to challenge Ricky and subsequently breaks his arm.    Ricky's winning streak comes to an abrupt end and as Girard's star rises, Ricky loses his sponsorship, his house, his wife to his racing partner Cal Naughton (Reilly), and is forced to move back in with his mom and get a job delivering pizzas.    It goes south fast for poor Ricky.    Then, with help from his mostly absentee father (Cole), he plots his comeback to regain everything from Girard.   

Talladega Nights has an improvised feel to certain parts, as if the actors were encouraged to find the furthest fringes of lunacy in their characters.    Most of it is inspired, some reaches a little too hard for a laugh, but it mostly works.     Besides Cohen, who provides a little more depth than you would expect from the villain, we have Amy Adams, who tells Ricky, "You are not a thinker, you are a doer,"  Gary Cole as Ricky's dad and mentor with unusual training exercises, and Reilly, whose Cal Naughton is a goofball sidekick who finds himself at odds with Ricky.    Cal has a bedside confession to Ricky which is really funny and unexpected.   

Ferrell is, of course, the center of all of this madness.   In some scenes, he kind of, sort of plays the straight man while allowing his co-stars to get in on the fun.    Ferrell is a comic actor who grew on me.    He is a unique talent who hits and misses, but he rarely has anything less than total enthusiasm for the material.    He also has done well in semi-dramatic roles also.    In Talladega Nights, he unselfishly lets his co-stars showcase their comic skills as well.