Talladea Nights
Three cheers for Ricky Bobby -- the man, the myth, the name. The title of this pitch-perfect parody of an auto-racing biopic is "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," but the racing hero's name is so great (and so much fun to say) that people are already just calling it "Ricky Bobby." The first time I heard the title character's nom de tube in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," the previous collaboration between Will Farrell and Adam McKay, I laughed out loud. A 1970s local newscaster? What better name than Ron Burgundy? And now, a NASCAR driver? Ricky Bobby, of course!
And the way Sacha Baron Cohen, as Ricky Bobby's gay French nemesis Jean Girard, pronounces his name (something like "Yrikee Bubbee" may be the closest print equivalent) is, remarkably, funny every single time. If Cohen's Borat movie ("Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan") is anywhere near as amusing as this one, a movie star is born. Er, "boorn."
As a biopic of a famous popular figure (following the Hollywood template of movies like "Walk the Line" and "Ray"), "Ricky Bobby" is flawless. It doesn't stand outside and make references to other movies; it inhabits the biopic formula all the way through -- even down to the slightly draggy stretch in the second act, before the big comeback.
There are the childhood scenes that have become part of the legend -- how young Ricky Bobby was born in the back of a speeding Chevy, to his first (and, for too long, only) words: "I wanna go fast." His shiftless, beer-drinkin', pot-smokin', ramblin' dad Reese Bobby (Gary Cole -- as good as he was in "Office Space") is, of course, mostly off cruisin' down the highway, so he's raised by his formerly wild-gal mom, Lucy (the magnificent Jane Lynch, from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Best in Show").
Ricky Bobby grows up to possess a winning record, countless corporate sponsors and endorsement deals, a big house, a driveway full of cars and boats, a Hot Wife (Leslie Bibb, as Carley Bobby), two trash-talking young sons, Walker and Texas Ranger (Houston Tumlin and Grayson Russell), and an enthusiastically subservient best friend and second banana Cal Naughton, Jr. (the always brilliant John C. Reilly), whose very name pegs him as a nothing. A Junior nothing.
Cal and Ricky Bobby nickname each other "Shake" and "Bake," to emphasize their partnership (Cal positions his car to help his team's star driver slingshot to victory), and because it's the most inane and unimaginative catch-phrase imaginable. It also utterly mystifies Girard, the Gitanes-smoking, Camus-reading racer in the Perrier car, while Cal and Ricky Bobby drive Old Spice and Wonder Bread, respectively. Running out of places to put sponsor logos, Ricky Bobby even sells his windshield to Fig Newtons.
The Bobbys live in a world where branding is everything, and product-placement infiltrates every aspect of their lives. Kind of like America in 2006. One endorsement deal stipulates that Ricky Bobby mention PowerAde at each grace -- which he peppers with other brand names and addresses to Dear Lord Baby Jesus, because he prefers the cute little baby one to the more hirsute adult version. This movie may be about dumb characters, but it's very smart about American sports, biopic movie conventions, and especially language. The writers and actors are in love with words -- how they sound, and what they mean, especially when they don't mean very much at all (as in most movie dialogRead full review
