As a huge Will Ferrell fan (I don't think Saturday Night Live has yet recovered from his departure) this was one of the movies I was most looking forward to this summer. After watching it, despite having laughed through most of it, I still found that I was vaguely dissatisfied and disappointed. The truth of the matter is, I think that my anticipation made it seem funnier than it actually was. I wanted it to be funny and so, for the first half-hour at least, I found it to be hysterically so. Was the rest of it actually less funny, or was it just that my momentum had stopped carrying me through it?
The concept of the movie certainly is one that would open itself up to jokes. Ferrell stars as Ricky Bobby, a man who was born in the back of a speeding car and who hasn't slowed down since. He's lived his whole life by the words of his alcoholic, absentee, small-time race car driver father. "If you're not first, then you're last." Now grown up, Ricky is the top NASCAR driver in America, has multiple endorsement deals (including one for "the official tampon of NASCAR, so women can cover up their mysterious lady parts" [Ricky's words]), "a smoking hot wife", two horribly aggressive sons named Walker and Texas Rangers ("if we'd wanted them to be wimps, we'd have named them Dr. Quinn and Medicine Woman!"), and everything seems to be going great for Ricky Bobby.
His life starts to unravel when Jean Girard, a gay, French, sophisticate driver comes to America with the sole purpose of defeating Ricky Bobby; which he promptly does, both physically and on the track. Following this, Ricky loses his wife and home to his best friend and is forced to live with his mother. Just when things seem to have reached rock bottom, his wayward father returns to put him back on the track to success, which apparently leads through a cougar in a car, driving blindfolded and getting thrown out of Applebee's.
Like Ricky Bobby, this movie is at its best when it's around or on the race track. The middle third of the film when Ricky is off the track, the story kind of runs out of gas. It isn't until Ricky's father straps a kilo of cocaine to the underside of the car, calls the cops and then tells Ricky that he's got five minutes to decide whether or not he's going to drive faster than ever or go to jail, that the movie takes off again.
While the movie does veer somewhat close to sentimentality a few times, it always manages to steer away from it at the last moment. One of my favorite moments comes near the end. Every race day Ricky leaves two tickets at the entrance for his father, who never shows up to take them. Finally, after returning into Ricky's life and helping him regain his confidence, his dad shows up on the day of the big revenge race against Jean Girard and takes the two tickets, then immediately turns around and starts trying to scalp them.
Just writing about this movie has made me smile so there is definitely plenty to laugh at in it. I think unlike most movies, where I go in with low expectations, my expectations of this one were just too unrealistically high. No movie could be as funny as I was imagining this one would be. I think it's going to take a second viewing for me to truly judge this one.
