Movies are Stupid: Round One...Ricky Bobby

The people who make films don't like them very much and the people that write films are way too connected to their projects. In the middle, us. We the movie viewing public are forced to endure films that are, at the same time, the anemic step-children of some disinterested studio head and the over-fed, bloated pet project of some under-appreciated and reality-detached writer. As a result, there are far too many hyphens floating around this review. As an example of both studio malaise and artistic overindulgence I will be using Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Studio executives are convinced of one thing that guides their every cinematic decision: Star Power equals dollars. Now, we all know that this is patently untrue. Look at Catwoman or Batman and Robin or any Arnold Schwarzenegger film not directed by James Cameron. Just because you put a known quantity on the poster does not mean we the viewing public will turn up in droves to give you our money. However, year after year we are served up the same actors (of varying degrees of skill or charm) in a spate of unwatchable films. Will Farrell is one such actor.

I am a Will Ferrell fan. Let's just get that out of the way. He was the one bright spot of Old School and often the only truly funny character on SNL during his tenure there. Imagine the Spartan Cheerleaders with any other male performer from those years. And that bit was just barely funny. The point is: He's got talent and he's willing to do just about anything to entertain. Certainly such a man should be high on any filmmaker's list of leading comedic men. And as such he appears time and again as largely the same character in a host of mediocre comedies that waste both his natural charisma and our time.

In Talladega Nights Ferrell portrays Ricky Bobby an idiot redneck NASCAR driver who wins despite all logic. His secret skill to winning so many NASCAR races? Drive Fast. Yep, all these years the other NASCAR drivers have been ignoring those upper gears that allow for great speed. But not Ricky Bobby. He looked down at the diagram on the gear shift and determined that there were other selections beyond 1st and 2nd. Genius! I know, I know, it's a stupid comedy. But couldn't they at least have come up with a better conceit as to how he wins so many races without having a brain in his head? Guess not.
The foil for Ricky Bobby is none other than Borat. Sacha Baren Cohen plays a gay, French, formula one racer who has come to destroy Ricky Bobby. Oh noes! How does this upstart Frenchy intend to win against such a racing virtuoso as Ricky Bobby? He's gonna drive even faster. Oh yeah, he's going all the way to 5th gear while Ricky languishes in 4th. The Fool!

Rounding out the cast for this humorous tour de force is Ricky's wife, whose name escapes me (such is her contribution to the movie), his two sons Walker and Texas Ranger (actually a funny joke) and Ricky's best friend, that guy from Boogie Nights that isn't Marky Mark. With such a stellar cast how could one go wrong? Let me explain. The wife is a moron like Ricky and that's fine. The charm of these movies is there wacky characters who defy all reason because reason is stupid and should be destroyed...as we all know. Unfortunately they cast an attractive, but not spectacular looking, actress in the role of Mrs. Bobby. A running gag throughout the film references her amazing breasts but even a cursory inspection of the goods reveals small, pert breasts to be sure, but not awe-inspiring. How much would it have cost to get an actress with a huge rack? Hell, even if they like the actress they had, why not use some of the Jar Jar Binks technology for a good purpose and increase her bust to epic proportions? I'm a stickler for such things. By "things" I mean "boobies" and by "stickler" I mean "I like to look at boobies".
Ricky's best friend and fellow racer is dumber than Ricky. He too uses the secret upper gears to gain better standing in the races, but he never wins. Why he doesn't just drive on past the lead car and become a winner himself is never explained. He just can't seem to do that and we accept it.

The two boys, Walker and Texas Ranger, are foul mouthed heathens. They actually made me laugh several times. Good for them.

Also, Ricky's father appears several times as part of a subplot involving Ricky driving fast because his daddy told him to...or something. There's a live cougar involved. Anyway, Gary Cole is in the movie and I like to see him working.

So, why does this movie fail so powerfully on every level? People went to see it in the theater. It is considered a financial success. Doesn't that prove that people are exactly as dumb as the studio execs think they are? To a degree they are right. But that doesn't make this movie funnier. It doesn't justify the seven dollars you paid to see it or the two hours it took to tell a weak story. And that brings me to my gripe with the screenwriters.

These guys toil in obscurity. They write scripts that no one will ever read. Scripts that get read but not produced and occasionally they get to write a script that will get produced but the studio gets final say on just how funny it can be. You see, it's not that the screenwriters can't write funny, it's that they are told to rewrite so many times that they lose sight of just what funny is. The result is a bloated script full of every gimmick, schtick, or half-baked joke they can dream up. It's the scattershot version of writing. Just give them everything and hope something sticks.

What the screenwriters don't seem to know is that the studio bosses don't really care that much about a NASCAR comedy. They only really want to put their mark on the film by pissing on the script a few times just to let everybody know they are still in charge. Once finished with their excretory actions, they move on to pee on other scripts. That leaves a urine soaked screenplay that is far too long. Ricky Bobby only really has to race a little bit, be wacky, beat the Frenchman and drink a Bud. Maybe he could push a little brown person down the stairs or something.

There were several times, early in the film, when I laughed out loud. Oh that nutty Ricky Bobby with his two first names. He's a hoot with his ignorant hillbillydom. This is, after all, a Judd Apatow produced film and that is almost always a good thing. But before long both my wife and I were checking the clock and making trips to the bathroom without pausing the film. Because the storyline follows no descernable arc there is nothing to keep up with. The characters don't change and neither do the jokes. Finally you are reduced to watching non-descript idiots wander around in front of the camera. Sure, there are pretty colors, but that only gets you so far with a viewer such as myself. What made the other well-known Apatow comedies so good was an investment in the characters. Knocked Up, Superbad, 40 Year-old Virgin all had good storytelling on top of silliness that draws a viewer in and makes you care in some small way about the idiots. If Ricky Bobby had died in a horrible flaming crash at the one hour mark of this film with no explanation as to what happened next, I would have been much happier with the product. The point is, too many gags strung together in the guise of a plot.

There we have it. A perfect example of a movie studio with no idea how to make a movie and screenwriters who don't know when to stop making a movie. The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is in no way alone in this strange vortex of suckitude. Semi-pro, Blades of Glory, anything starring Jimmy Fallon...all of these are terrible and pointless. "Wave your arms and scream like a banshee" isn't direction enough to make a performace worth watching. Movies can be insane, I like insane, they just need to come to a point and then shut up. I'm going to do that now.