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A comedy with horsepower to spare.
'Talladega Nights': Deliciously Subversive Political Satire
One of the stupidest and one of the funniest movies in Will Ferrell's career.
Essentially a string of gags loosely looped together, a set of absurd situations for the actors to clown their way through, Talladega Nights is an affable entertainment, both a celebration and a satire of lowbrow pleasures.
Talladega Nights may be brash, unbridled, even unhinged, but its cornpone humor is rich in parody, and its craftsmanship is superb.
Though the movie about a moronic NASCAR racer overall is uneven and Ricky Bobby's saga lacks focus, the stupid-comical banter and the lampooning of this particular brand of car racing proves entertaining.
You pretty much have to like Will Ferrell to like Talladega Nights, it's his film through and through. But if you do, you're in for a ride.
Never as entertaining as it can be.
Talladega starts out slow, picks up speed in the middle, and nearly crashes and burns in the end.
The movie takes a piecemeal approach that allows for several guffaw-inducing comic bits, but doesn't hold together enough for a sustained comic experience.
The script by Ferrell and director Adam McKay, a parody of sports biopics, takes the same freewheeling approach that served them well on Anchorman, but with a more mean-spirited edge.
Showcases Will Ferrell's comedy genius to perfection.
Wild, raunchy comedy about NASCAR culture.
i concur with everything bobby has to say about highlander
Will Ferrell and director/writing collaborator Adam McKay have carved out a comfortable comic niche in taking confidently clueless oafs and pulling the rug out from under the core of resolutely prototypical alpha male existence.
Check your brain at the box-office to enjoy this brand of politically-incorrect hilarity poking fun mostly at gays, women and the French, all aimed at a redneck crowd with an average I.Q. of about 75.
In Talladega, Mr. Ferrell finds his best role to date.
Though this is Will Ferrell's vehicle, it's a bright and funny ensemble cast that makes it fun.
Riddled with blatant product placement. Blades of Glory is better. Ferrell can't save this one. Sacha adds little.
The disappointment of this movie is not that we don't see enough of Will Ferrell. It's disappointing because what we do see, we've seen before, and better.
It's not that ethnic and cultural stereotyping can't be funny -- Lord knows the laugh industry would be nothing without them -- it's just that movies like this one keep punching the same buttons over and over again.
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