He's Not Laughing With You, He's Laughing At You...

I haven't seen "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby", but I have seen many Will Ferrell performances both during his time on Saturday Night Live and in movies like "Anchorman" and "Old School". While he can be howlingly funny, he also has a mean streak (his impression of GWB as a coke fiend, his take on singer Robert Goulet are some of the mean spirited things, funny but mean spirited he's done). Judging from the trailers that have been on TV and the INTERNET, I got the impression that this movie might be indeed funny but the jokes aren't being done with any appreciation or love of what is being spoofed. I got the distinct impression that the people making this feature view the people they are spoofing as rubes and idiots. Sort of backing up my impression is this review from Entertainment Weekly...

Will Ferrell has a mission, if not an obsession — to celebrate, and satirize, the pumped-up folly of American manhood — and he has found a customized vehicle for it in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. As Ricky, a NASCAR racer with major daddy issues who grows up nursing one thought (''I wanna go fast''), Ferrell uses his steady-silly baby-fat gaze and impervious ego to make gleeful fun of the tacky bravado of ''outlaw'' Southern car culture.

How arrogant a yokel is Ricky? He can't stop preening about his skills (''I wake up...and I p--- excellence!''), he's so greedy for sponsors that he plasters a Fig Newton decal on his windshield, and he turns the act of saying grace into a competitive sport. He also won't let his best friend, the boobish rube Cal (John C. Reilly), win a single race. Talladega Nights takes some very funny cheap shots, especially when Ricky faces down his new team member — a gay, French, Camus-reading-behind-the-wheel Formula One driver played, with a leer worthy of Peter Sellers, by Sacha Baron Cohen.

I'm not a big NASCAR fan and I've been known to refer to it as NeckCAR from time to time...but I can understand why a lot of folks find the races an exciting and fun way to spend a weekend. So far this weekend a lot of people have attended this picture, and really I hope they enjoyed themselves (there's nothing worse than going to a movie and them having to deal with one that sucks...who the hell am I kidding there's a lot of things worse than that, but anyway)...I hope that I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that he's laughing at you and not with you...all the way to the bank.