Tag Archives: Molly Shannon

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

 

What was I think­ing when I rented this turd? Oh yeah, that Tal­ladega Nights: The Bal­lad of Ricky Bobby might be a funny, enter­tain­ing diver­sion. One can’t always watch grim tales of abor­tion in Com­mu­nist Roma­nia or the death of a small town’s entire gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren. I had long since tired of Will Fer­rell, once a trea­sure on the Sat­ur­day Night Live cast, but long since devolved into a movie fac­tory that pro­duces mostly crass­ness for crass­ness’ sake. But I had heard Tal­ladega Nights also fea­tured good turns from Molly Shan­non, Amy Adams, and Sasha Baron Cohen, and I had also recently enjoyed John C. Reilly in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (read The Dork Report review). All fail to amuse here.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky BobbyI tried and failed to find a still from the movie includ­ing Amy Adams, so you’ll have to set­tle for line dancing

The ensem­ble obvi­ously impro­vised whole chunks of the movie, but not really to its ben­e­fit. I counted only two bits that made me laugh: Bobby extem­po­rizes the com­mer­cial endorse­ment “If you don’t chew Big Red, *BLEEP* you!” (a line so aggres­sively stu­pid I laughed on impulse), and later, his poncy French rival Jean Girard (Cohen) reveals his cor­po­rate spon­sor, Per­rier. These two gags should make it clear that although Talledega Nights is not the first com­edy to par­ody extreme prod­uct place­ment, it does drive it to a hereto­fore unex­plored new level of absur­dity. Finally, it dis­penses with its rel­a­tive sub­tleties alto­gether and sim­ply cuts to an actual Applebee’s commercial.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky BobbyBorat meets Bubba

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonypictures.com/movies/talladeganights

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Year of the Dog

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Year of the Dog movie poster

 

The Net­flix queue is, by its nature, the oppo­site of the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of a rental store. You add movies you think you might want to see some day, then sit back and wait for them to arrive in an order decided by com­puter, accord­ing to fac­tors and algo­rithms out­side of your con­trol. Enough time had passed since I added Year of the Dog that I could no longer recall why. Pos­si­bly I read a good review some­where, or maybe I was curi­ous about the sud­den reap­pear­ance of Molly Shan­non (part of “my” Sat­ur­day Night Live of the mid-90s — am I right that peo­ple feel the most affec­tion for the SNL cast of their col­lege years?). But I feel baited and switched; this is not a drama or roman­tic com­edy but rather a movie with an agenda.

Writer/director Mike White’s Year of the Dog is a feature-length drama­ti­za­tion of Janeane Garofalo’s gag “You can love your pets, but you can’t love your pets.” Not unlike Lily in the recent Dork Report screen­ing of Eagle Vs. Shark, Peggy (Shan­non) is a gen­tle sweet­heart, but alien­ated and lonely. Her rela­tion­ship with brother Pier (Thomas McCarthy from The Wire Sea­son 5) and sister-in-law Bret (Laura Dern) is dis­tant at best, and her clos­est friends are obliv­i­ous workmates.

Molly Shannon in Year of the DogThis commute’s a bitch

When she loses the uncon­di­tional love of her dog Pen­cil, she becomes hun­gry for, as she puts it, a sin­gle word to define her. On a date with Al (John C. Reilly), Peggy demon­strates a dis­like of hunt­ing, the seed from which her new fer­vor for an ani­mal activist lifestyle grows. Her one word, she decides, is to be “vegan.”

Her new life teases her at first with the pos­si­bil­ity of love with Newt (Peter Sars­gaard), but he is too much like her, or what she is soon to become: unable to love humans nearly as much as ani­mals. From here, the tone shifts to the dis­turb­ing, as Peggy causes her life to fall apart. Her clumsy activism costs her her job and fam­ily, and she soon descends to theft and attempted murder.

Molly Shannon in Year of the DogYou can love your pets, but you can’t love your pets

And yet, the movie appears to present her ulti­mate state as a happy end­ing of sorts. She chooses to be friend­less and unloved, but has found mean­ing and pur­pose. The most impor­tant part of the movie is miss­ing: what hap­pens between Peggy hit­ting rock bot­tom (where she becomes unable to func­tion in soci­ety) and her total ascen­dance as a self-assured being? I don’t buy the sud­den switcheroo that it’s all OK because she has dis­cov­ered herself.

Would real-life ani­mal activists find Peggy and Newt amus­ingly exag­ger­ated ver­sions of them­selves, or insult­ing stereo­types? Speak­ing as the owner of two res­cued casts, it strikes me that choos­ing the love of ani­mals over that of peo­ple is a kind of men­tal ill­ness that begs for cor­rec­tion, not celebration.

Offi­cial movie site: www.yearofthedogmovie.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to me.