Talladega Nights, when it all comes down to it, is nothing more than one big, 105 minute long joke.  Really all it is is Will Ferrell sending up the Red-Neck and running around like an crazy person who thinks he’s on fire.  It’s just a good thing that with Ferrell and his Anchorman helmer, Adam McKay behind him, they stretch out the joke without mercy and make it laughable the entire time with surprising ease.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
4 Stars

Will Ferrell is the head honcho comedian in Hollywood today.  Sure, Jim Carrey is as zany as ever, but it’s been years since he’s put out a comedy that wasn’t brought down by a boring script or director.  And Adam Sandler regularly puts out a $100 million dollar picture, but they sort of blow hard.  Ferrell, on the other hand, has captured and even helped to create today’s humor, pushing pompous and outrageous jerks to the foreground, while busting many a gut in teenagers across the country.  Whether they’re watching DVDs of Anchorman or watching reruns of SNL, Ferrell’s leading the industry.

And Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby only helps to cement his position in Hollywood.  It may be dumb, it might not have dilemmas that force you to question everything about your life; but it’s funny.  It’s damn funny.  Ferrell, co-stars Gary Cole and John C. Reilly, and Adam McKay nail the sense of humor found in Anchorman to a disturbing degree.

Ferrell is the film’s namesake, a man who grew up shouting “I wanna go fast!” about as often as he breathed.  But with some words of wisdom from his dead-beat dad (Cole), Bobby gets the determination to drive faster than anyone else, eventually breaching the top ranks of NASCAR.  Once there, he gladly takes his self-appointed title as the best person ever.  He brags and assumes greatness, but at the same time is kind and well-meaning enough to be lovable and able to sympathize with.  He really does believe he’s the best and the brightest of his kind, until the king of the French Racing circuit (Sacha Baron Cohen) comes along and tries to steal his glory.

Ferrell and Cohen exaggerate their characters to colossal degrees, but do so with success.  Ferrell, on one hand, thinks America is the best country in the world, loves Jesus and names his kids Walker and Texas Ranger.  If George W. Bush were a NASCAR racer, he might be Ricky Bobby.  Cohen takes his Euro trash character and exploits every stereotype ever made, not only giving him a French accent that sounds like his tongue has swelled to twice its size, but also making him flamboyantly, outrageously and literally gay.  Some may mistake this for homophobia, but plain simple all it is is taking every preconception we’ve had about the French and saying, “What if all of that was real?”

The clashing characters combine to give Talladega Nights a satirical take on U.S. relations with Europe in this era of a Struggle Against Extremism.  It takes our idea of the French and their idea of us; and if we’re really this stupid, who can blame them for hating us?  And if the French are really that gay, how can we not laugh at them?  It’s a pleasant undertone that emerges, likely by accident, that helps to add intelligence to a movie centers on idiots.  But in the end, it’s the humor that makes Talladega Nights what it is, not antics a la Dr. Strangelove.

Talladega Nights isn’t anything if it isn’t funny, pushing jokes that work every minute and more.  It’s not just laugh-out-loud funny, it’s I-hope-I-don’t- accidentally-spit-on-everyone-else-in-the-theater funny.  It might not be touching like Little Miss Sunshine, but it’s not that kind of movie: it’s a stupid comedy.  And if stupid comedies work can work this well, than it must be good to be stupid.

Robin Williams goes crazy creepy stalker guy on a kid and a blind woman…and he’s the normal one.  The Night Listener never quite achieves its goals.  Still there’s some interesting parts, performances, and mysteries that might be worth a look if you’re a fan of thrillers.  I can’t quite recommend it, but I won’t tell you to stay away.

The Night Listener
2 & 1/2 Stars

The greatest flaw in The Night Listener is how it blows a good setup and, in the end, never becomes the film it desires to be, or could have been.  But where most thrillers these days are blood n’ guts slasher films, it is nice to see a psychological thriller, even if it goes off the deep end.

Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is a famous radio personality whose world is crumbling around him.  His lover Jess (Bobby Cannavale) has moved out, tired of having their relationship mined for fodder on Gabriel’s show.  It’s at this point Gabriel’s agent gives him a manuscript to read by a dying young boy named Pete (Rory Culkin).

Pete’s story tells of his molestation by the hands of his parents and their friends (complete with creepy, and totally unnecesary, flashbacks shown in dark grainy footage).  After reading the manuscript and learning of Pete’s poor health Gabriel begins a telephone relationship with Pete and Donna (Toni Collette), the woman who takes care of him.

As weeks go by small inconsistencies and questions about Pete and Donna begin to fester in Gabriel’s mind and he begins to wonder if he is the victim of a hoax.  Unable to let it go, Gabriel begins a journey to find if Pete and Donna are real.  What he finds are more questions than answers.

The film has a good set-up but no real sense of realization, resolution, or completion.  Once Gabriel’s travels begin, the story takes a sharp left-turn into crazywackofunland.  He starts behaving erratically and engaging in behavior that defies the logic and sense of the man from the first half of the film.

The movie continues to tease us with the identity and reality of Pete, and presents several suggestions for Donna’s behavior.  However, halfway through the film you realize the writers have no idea how to make the mystery pay-off for the audience.

A final note for those of you going to see this film.  There’s a strange epilogue tacked on to the end that gives away the truth of the story.  Besides being incredibly lame, it destroys the only real thing the film had going for it – the mystery of Pete.  I’d suggest you leave as Gabriel is summing up the story on the radio, unless you want to be severely disappointed.

There are several interesting bits here but they aren’t put together well enough for me to recommend the film to you.  You just have this feeling if the film had been put in the hands of a more experienced director or had gotten the necessary rewrites it could have been much more than just a mild curiosity.