With its Southern twang, the title of Will Ferrell’s latest comedy, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is tantalizingly clever.
It even has a hint of the mournful, like maybe race-car driver Ricky Bobby might jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
This being a comedy and all, Ricky Bobby’s fall from racing grace is never that tragic. But it turns out there still are reasons for singing the blues.
This mildly crude yet oddly tame tale about a NASCAR hotshot who burns rubber to the top of the pole before having a speedway blowout runs on underinflated tires. Worse, they’re retreads from other inspirational sports movies.
The very energy that goosed co-writers Ferrell and director Adam McKay to brave a movie about NASCAR gets zapped in the translation.
The ignition turns well enough. A moonshine-addled quote attributed to one of the nation’s first ladies is followed by Roger Miller crooning “King of the Road.”
Born in the backseat of a muscle car, Ricky insisted, “I want to go fast. … I want to go fast” as soon as he was able to talk.
His mama, Lucy (Jane Lynch), had to raise him solo. Daddy, a stock-car racer and scoundrel, went off to pursue the smell of the grease gun, the roar of the crowds.
Played by Gary Cole, Reese Bobby shows up once to saddle his boy with the thought that, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Later he’ll turn up again, spouting more quasi-Yoda insights siphoned from a can of malt liquor.
One day, doing time in a pit crew with best friend Cal Naughton Jr. (John C. Reilly), Ricky Bobby is called into service. (It’s not just a tic. It’s hard not to call Ricky Bobby, well … Ricky Bobby.)
He drives. Fast. His childhood need is fulfilled by foolhardy speed. Soon he’s a star with the attitude and spoils to prove it: mammoth sponsorships, an ostentatious McMansion, a curvy wife named Carley (Leslie Bibb) and two back-talking sons, Walker and T.R. (a.k.a. Texas Ranger).
Greg Germann plays Larry Dennitt Jr., son of the owner of the team Ricky races for. As his sauced spouse, Molly Shannon has little to do beside sample a Meg Ryan moment from a funnier comedy.
When Larry becomes team boss, he brings in Frenchman Jean Ricard, a former Formula One racer who has come to America to triumph on zee NASCAR circuit.
A skilled improvisor, Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Ali G. Show”) was so much more agile in “Madagascar” as a lemur than he is here as a Gaul galling enough to introduce his lover as his “husband.”
Taking on NASCAR’s working-class roots then tossing a gay Frenchman into the mix no doubt struck the filmmakers with its ha-ha potential. Only “Talladega Nights” sputters with yellow-flag worries.
Comedies teasing subculture tastes usually offend someone. Ferrell and McKay race toward that eventuality then start tapping the brakes like skittish drivers on I-25. That could be fine. It could have been – to borrow Cal and Ricky Bobby’s brotherly sign-off – a “shaked-and-baked” dish of tolerance, if only it didn’t seem so darn equivocating.
Too many of the movie’s scattered chuckles are muted. One exception is a dinner-table debate about which version of Jesus to give thanks to. Ricky’s partial to the babe in the manger. But there are so many personal Jesuses celebrated in the conversation Depeche Mode would be proud.
The iffy edge captured by the Blue Collar Comedy Tour’s trash-talking good ol’ boys isn’t just absent, it’s hankered for.
Like too many comedies, “Talladega Nights” left us with a humble prayer. It’s one Ricky Bobby could bow his head to: “Dear infant, baby Jesus, please help us to understand why this movie is not as funny as it should be.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”
PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, drug references and brief comic violence|1 hour, 48 minutes|
COMEDY|Directed by Adam Mc- Kay; written by Will Ferrell and Mc- Kay; photography by Oliver Wood; starring Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Michael Clarke Duncan, Leslie Bibb, Jane Lynch, Gary Cole|Opens today at area theaters.
