If
I had to sum up the experience of watching Talladega Nights: The Ballad of
Ricky Bobby in two words, those words would be, "scattershot laughs".
This micro-review could just as easily be applied to most of
Ferrell's dumb comedy offerings over the years. His characters may
change, as well as the scenarios, but underneath the goofy characterizations
and different wardrobe, most of these movies have the same brand of humor,
going for the easy laugh, no matter how cheap. These movies can be
funny, and sometimes very funny, but on many occasions, the jokes bomb for
whole scenes, zapping away the overall energy and momentum of the film as a
whole. Talladega Nights might have the goods to keep the Ferrell
faithful giddy, but for the rest of us, it has more than the usual share of
comedic lulls.
Will Ferrell (Winter
Passing, Bewitched) plays champion NASCAR
driver Ricky Bobby, who literally from the day he was born, had a "need for
speed". His deadbeat father only imparted one bit of advice to him, "If
you're not first, you're last", a golden rule of life that Ricky has adhered
to in nearly everything he sets out to do. He also likes to showboat how
good he is, which causes his team owner so much aggravation that a new guy is
brought in, a gay Frenchman named Jean Girard (Cohen,
Madagascar) a former Formula One driver who
may actually be even better than Ricky Bobby. Ricky's life soon begins
to fall apart, testing his mettle and drive to success when all that he's
built up now seems to have met with failure.
I guess you can see where the film is going
just from the plot summation. Although done in a zany way, this is a
film that adheres strictly to formula, as we watch a guy on top of the world
suddenly lose it all, having to learn about humility, respect and life in
general on his climb back up to the top. I doubt anyone that goes to see
this film really cares that it isn't very original in terms of its story, so
it's futile to criticize it for a lack of surprises. What's most important
is that we laugh and laugh and laugh again.
I realize that the threshold for humor is very
different in nearly everyone, and that's especially true when it comes to a
brand of humor that you're either fully in tune with or you aren't. My
guess is that if you find all of Ferrell's films to be hilarious, you'll get
enough laughs out of Talladega Nights to leave the theater with a
smile. If you think Ferrell has been hit-and-miss thus far in his
career, you're likely to think the film is as expected. Those that can't
stand Ferrell or his humor should avoid the film altogether, as Ferrell's
mugging and yelling, along with his penchant for gags just tossed in out of left field to get
audiences to laugh out of surprise, are in full effect here.
The slipshod way that Talladega Nights
is put together makes it seem like they just brainstormed each scene right
before filming and ad-libbed their way into jokes, rather than came into the
project with a finished script. Perhaps this comes out of Ferrell's
background in improvisational comedy, especially in his years on SNL, where he
had less than a week to come up with enough material to fill up a good portion
of the show's 90 minute run time. It's one thing to do it on what we all
know is a live show made quickly, but it's quite another to bring that same
approach to a major motion picture release, where we expect the comedy to be
more developed, not looking like it was hastily slapped together at the last
moment.
I've said this about so many films, it's
starting to sound cliché, but Talladega Nights really does feel
like a skit comedy idea padded out in order to fill up a full-length feature.
In order to fill up the time, they inject many side stories, off-the-wall
one-joke characters (Bobby's kids names are "Walker" and "Texas Ranger"), and
whatever else they could think of to take this thin premise all the way to the
finish line.
They say that in comedy, you should never let
them (the audience) see you sweat. With Talladega Nights, Ferrell
often looks like he is really laboring for laughs, proverbially covered with
the sheen of constant perspiration that has us fully aware that he isn't quite
sure what that he's really doing is working. In live comedy in front of an audience, he
would probably be able to tell from crowd reaction when he's stumbled into
something funny and run with it, but in film form, there is no feedback, as he
just tosses up whatever comes to mind and hopes that the hit-to-miss ratio is
good enough to make it a success overall. When it works, it works, but
the real albatross to the film's enjoyment is the fact that, for too many
scenes, a great deal of energy is expended for minimal, and sometimes
nonexistent humor value.
With the last Ferrell/McKay concoction,
Anchorman, they initially made about a five hour film
and then chopped out most of the scenes that didn't work during audience
testing to form a regular length film that scored enough laughs to satisfy.
I suspect that Talladega Nights was shot with the exact same approach,
as we see characters in the film that look like they should have more screen
time have only a couple of lines (David Koechner, Andy Richter) and sometimes
we see people that have no lines at all (Mos Def and Elvis Costello are shown
but literally nothing is done with them).
I guess my frustration as a movie lover, and
not just a reviewer, is that I expect big budget films to be made with some
sort of firm game plan before they start to roll film, and I also expect that
I'm going to see something worth my hard-earned dollars when I go to the
theater. If I wanted to see entire scenes created on a whim, ad-libbed
by the actors, I'd watch "Saturday Night Live". Until Ferrell desires to
make films with preconceived plot and jokes, instead of his current system of
doing most of the "creative" work when the director yells "action", we can expect little more out of him than
occasionally funny, mostly improvised moments amid barely-realized storylines
and cute, goofball characters injected in desultory fashion solely in the hope that
they add a new wrinkle to the piecemeal production style.
Talladega Nights is much like the sport of NASCAR itself: lots of time, money and energy is
spent engaged in an activity where they just keep going around in circles.
Qwipster's rating:
©2006 Vince Leo
