Review: Talledega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby

RECOMMENDED
“Cars,” but with jokes and people. What with “Anchorman” began as smart-dumb inspiration in the hands of writer-director Adam McKay and co-writer Will Ferrell flowers in “Talledega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby” into a genial, accomplished surrealism. Okay, it’s genius. Genius of a kind. I’m always partial to movies that make me laugh this hard without the jokes being unduly cruel to the characters, and in “Talladega Nights,” even the dumbest ox and the seediest of hayseeds (Ricky Bobby’s daddy, Gary Cole) have glorious little moments of comic brilliance. (Improv lives.) Where others settle for glum-dumb-stumblebum, “Talladega Nights” is sometimes even magnificent in its serene comic assurance. There’s another aspect that’s attractive, which pays off weirdly in the post-post credits scene: how can movies takes something that is affected, contrived and even phony—see what Lars von Trier is trying to do—and come out the other side as something that evokes real emotion. Something about feeling, I guess. And this is a smart, feel-good, feel-silly movie that you will need to see to understand “Please be 18”; “Dad, you made that grace yer bitch”; and “I’m as hard as a diamond in an ice storm right now.” With John C. Reilly as Ricky’s childhood “shake and bake” buddy; Sacha Baron Cohen playing a Formula One driver as a gay Belmondo; Amy Adams as an assistant who gets to bloom and roar late in the story; Michael Clarke Duncan; Leslie Bibb; and, for no good reason, Elvis Costello and Mos Def. Zoom. (Ray Pride)