| THE UNVANQUISHED : Adam McKay's 'Talladega Nights' [6/10] |
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| Monday, 02 October 2006 | |
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The benefits of staying in your cinema-seat till the very end of a movie's credits are well advertised by Talladega Nights - after Anchorman, the second in a projected 'Mediocre American Man Trilogy' from McKay and his star and co-writer Will Ferrell. What has on the surface seemed a fairly silly comedy about an obnoxious racing car driver - Ferrell's implausibly-monikered Ricky Bobby - is in fact a parable of the Old South's decline, and a tale full of "moral ambiguity." The characters in this post-credits coda may be ostensibly discussing William Faulkner's classic story The Bear, but only the dopiest lunk could possibly fail to grasp what's actually being discussed. One such lunk is, of course, Ferrell's meaty, blank-eyed Bobby, a good ol' boy who lives by the creed "If you ain't first, you're last." Bobby's lack of brainpower doesn't stop him from becoming a living legend in the world of NASCAR racing - accompanied at every stage of his rapid ascent by best pal, and perennial race-day runner-up, Cal Naughton (John C Reilly). Having bested all of his domestic opponents, Bobby's reign is only threatened by the unexpected arrival on the scene of European Formule un champion Jean Girrard (Sacha Baron Cohen): a Camus-reading, Gitane-smoking, black-coffee-sipping, Perrier-sponsored, William-Blake-quoting ("zee cut werrrm forgeevez zee ploww") fop who scandalises the God-fearing, flag-worshipping, (implicitly) Republican-voting NASCAR world by first (a) turning up with husband Gregoire (Andy Richter) and then (b) imperiously lowering the colours of the crowd's favourite, Ricky Bobby - or, as Girrard puts it "Reekee Bobb-bee." Can this really be the end of the "big, hairy, American winning machine"? In a word: no. Talladega Nights (named after the Alabama town, pronounced 'Talladigga', which is to NASCAR what Churchill Downs is to horse-racing) is in part a knowing spoof of rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches sports movies, lovingly tracing each absurd step in Bobby's dizzyingly mercurial journey from obscurity to celebrity and back again. While Bobby's career switches abruptly between fast lanes and slow, the picture itself is content to chug amiably along in middling gear: not that many of the gags fall flat (a notable exception: the unwisely-repeated 'joke' in which a confused Bobby strips down to his underwear on the track) but neither does the script ever really hit top comic speed: chuckles rather than sidesplitting belly-laughs are the order of the day (among recent UK releases, both the overheralded Snakes on a Plane and the underhyped Crank are actually more consistently amusing despite being technically thrillers rather than comedies.) One problem is that McKay and Ferrell never quite seem to resolve their attitude to the sport, the people and the region they're lampooning, or to the deeper (Faulknerian?) themes which they may or may not be "exploring." They critique modern-day America's money-mad, win-at-all-costs, spectacle-hungry, corporate-culture mindset, while at the same time filling their picture with countless slam-bang track sequences (scored with pounding nu-metal or old-school bluesy rock) and a dizzying array of blatant product-placements (including actual TV-style adverts for the real-life restaurant chain Applebee's.) Perhaps wary of potential accusations that they might be patronising a large section of the potential audience, McKay (a 'Yankee' from Philadelphia) and Ferrell (Californian) enlist many of the sport's actual commentators and personalities (including living legend Dale Earnhardt Jr) to give their rather daft enterprise some vestige element of realism and 'integrity.' What we end up with is a semi-affectionate spoof of the NASCAR circus - a cartoonish expansion of Renny Harlin's baffling Driven (2001) - and it's an approach which effectively precludes any possibility of real satirical bite. That said, McKay and Ferrell will no doubt be as pleased by the way Talladega Nights has outraged some more excitable sections of America's reactionary press as by its surprise smash-hit status at the US box office. But it seems a waste of energy to become quite so worked up over what's essentially pretty undemanding multiplex fare - functionally directed, competently performed. Of the three Oscar nominees in the cast (the others being Amy Adams as Bobby's sweetheart and Michael Clarke Duncan as his chief mechanic), only Reilly makes much of an impact: his casting as Cal Naughton is partly an inside-joke reference to his performance as Buck Brotherton in Days of Heaven, a rather more po-faced trip into the gaudy world of NASCAR, but there's also more than a sprinkling of his amiable doofus Reed Rothchild from Boogie Nights (Rothchild ended up as a stage conjuror; Naughton's nom de track is 'The Magicman.') Jane Lynch and Gary Cole contribute game turns as Bobby's parents - characters who first appear in a prologue that's arguably the funniest thing in the whole picture. Best value, however, is Baron Cohen, craftily priming American audiences for the imminent arrival of the rather more full-tilt Borat, and rather effortlessly elevating the patchy material whenever he's on screen. His movie-stealing Girrard is a tongue-in-cheek caricature that's all the more amusing for being played relatively straight - crucially, he works very well with Ferrell (the fact that both are similarly tall helps), the ongoing feud between Bobby and his Gallic némésis culminating in a satisfyingly epic final duel to the suitably-histrionic strains of Pat Benatar's 'We Belong.' The cheesily inspirational outcome, of course, is never in doubt, and is all part of the ever-so-knowing fun: because, as Faulkner himself put it, 'Man will not merely endure; he will prevail.' Neil Young 2nd October, 2006 TALLADEGA NIGHTS - THE BALLAD OF RICKY BOBBY : [6/10] : USA 2006 : Adam McKAY : 108 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Empire cinema, Gate complex, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 11th September 2006 - press show (with thanks to Duncan Scott)  * Renny Harlin's DRIVEN In the same way as so many ghouls watch Formula 1 motor-racing for the crashes, Driven is dire enough to attract rubbernecking aficionados of car-wreck movies. It makes The Fast and the Furious look like Duel - but this isn't an awful movie in the same vein as, say, Lara Croft : Tomb Raider, which was presumably intended to be good. Here, it's impossible to ditch the suspicion that director Harlin is actually having a laugh: lampooning the world of CART racing, and trying to capture the full horror of its crassness by being similarly crass himself. Then again, perhaps he just look at Stallone's ridiculous "script", pocketed his fee and set out to go as far over the top as possible, crafting a diabolically OTT hymn to "the brotherhood of speed," tipping over into a realm beyond bad - on the basis that neither Stallone nor any of the other numb-nut producers would mind or notice. Harlin is a talented director (Prison, Elm St 4, Long Kiss Goodnight), one whose busy filmography makes it clear he doesn't have to use this bad-advert, faux-MTV style. His sleazy "tits and ass" shots, blatant product placement, bad CGI effects and relentless deafening muzak are, we must conclude, entirely deliberate: conscious, calculated choices. Right from the clumsily confusing opening titles, we're bombarded with on idiot-level on-screen titles, and some hilariously redundant, over-excited ESPN commentary. These summarise the plot so far, describe what we're seeing, then provides instant recap, mainly in words of one syllable.Not that it's ever hard to follow what's going on: the wafer-thin 'plot' pits rookie Jimmy Bly (Pardue) against reigning champ, German 'iceman' Beau Brandenburg (Schweiger as an old-schule Teuton baddie). When his form dips, his team manager (Reynolds) asks retired star Joe Tanto (Stallone) to help the youngster with his form both on the track and off. Jimmy and Beau's rivalry is given extra edge when Jimmy falls for Beau's ex-girlfriend (Estella Warren), while Joe's budding relationship with 'journalist' Lucretia (Stacy Edwards) isn't helped by the presence of his bitchy ex-wife (Gina Gershon), who's now married to another driver (Cristian de la Fuente)... If anything, Driven seems to be made by people who can't stand motor racing - in what's probably an accurate bit of movie anthropology, Harlin makes all the CART locations look pretty much identical. Apart from one well-edited montage of Tokyo nightlife, we see very little of the host cities, and the race fans are an eerily homogenous bunch - leggy lovelies in revealing outfits; boorish rednecks wolfing down their local versions of fast food. It's an interchangeable cars-n-burgers-n-babes playground, with the racers idolised like tinpot gods.It's impossible to tell whether Harlin is celebrating this glossy, airheaded world or ripping it apart - satirical intent seems plain during what must be this year's daftest movie scene, with Bly and Tanto racing prototype racing cars through the busy Chicago streets, zipping past regular traffic at 195mph, shattering glass and causing a woman's dress to fly up and reveal her panties, Marilyn Monroe style. But when Harlin himself pops up in a boys-n-toys Don Simpson-style cameo as a driver, you have to confront the unpalatable possibility that this may not be a colossal piss-take after all. Neil Young 26th September, 2001 (seen Sep-25-01, Warner Village, Newcastle) |
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