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.

I 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.

Borat 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.