The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

A few thoughts on Talladega Nights: I found Will Ferrell's petulantly childish character, which he alters from film to film but never discards, more palatable here than in, say, Elf. I usually enjoy his supporting roles (Austin Powers, Zoolander, etc.) and he was probably my favorite part of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He of course did terrific stuff on SNL, but he often seems to me either one-dimensional or too satisfied with doing what seems to always work so well, thereby satisfying the large and seemingly rabid cult of Will Ferrell (eg. the bizarre and not very interesting Chazz in Wedding Crashers). Of course, that could have something to do with directors who don't want to ask him for anything more (I don't even have any idea of whether or not there are any brilliant American comedy directors right now), but it disappoints me that everyone is okay with Ferrell as a moronically immature character succeeding at life despite or rather due to his obliviousness to the complexities of the world around him.

I suppose my alternative proposals must be either genuinely dark comedy (not just creepiness) or something more adventurous than gross-out gags. Of course, it's often and widely lamented that major Hollywood films are directed toward the generic adolescent male, so perhaps this kind of complaint has nothing to do with Will Ferrell in general. I was struck even in (the very funny) Talladega Nights by how clever the commentary on marketing/branding/product placement was, making use of NASCAR's history of absolute advertisement saturation, although in the end the commentary was overwhelmed by the actual marketing/branding/product placement itself. As in almost every comedy since forever, I think, roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through the pacing and the tension are destroyed by the introduction of emotional/romantic/heroic themes, which is bizarre because they tend to be so shallow and uninteresting compared to the comedy they replace. TN doesn't get as heavily bogged down as some (although the use of music during the final race is almost unbelievably gratuitous, and I even enjoyed most of the selections) I'm baffled by the notion that the movie or the audience or somebody needs a reprieve from the screwball world of the first half of the script so that we can reassure ourselves that the onscreen world is still as basically sitcom-saccharine as we've come to believe.

Nobody is a real person in the movie, but I found it kind of disturbing that the people became less real or potentially respectable as we moved away from the main characters. The wife and children were hilarious caricatures, but the father-in-law, perhaps the most marginalized, was near frightening in his non-humanity. Kind of like in Bad Santa or probably a lot of other movies. Not that lunatics aren't funny, because they are, but I don't think it would be as unsettling if everyone was similarly totally deranged. Perhaps a sort of egalitarian-totalitarian craziness: everything and everyone crazy, all the time. I don't know, I've got more thinking to do on the subject.