Hacker Cinema
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
2006 · Film · 108 min
Directed by Adam McKay
The fastest man on four wheels, Ricky Bobby, is one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. A big, hairy American winning machine, Ricky has everything a dimwitted daredevil could want, a luxurious mansion, a smokin' hot wife, and all the fast food he can eat. But Ricky's turbo-charged lifestyle hits an unexpected speed bump when he's bested by flamboyant Euro-idiot Jean Girard and reduced to a fear-ridden wreck.
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7 comments on Hacker News
And I laughed my ass off watching American Fiction. These are funny movies! Just a different vibe from say Talladega Nights.
How often do you flush the coolant in your car? How often do you jack it up and check for play in your ball joints? How often do you clean your Refrigerator Coils? How often do you clean your exhaust fans in your home? Do you seal any grout every year? Do you test your GFI outlets monthly like recommended? When was the last time you Lubricate Garage door springs and tracks? You drain your water heater yearly and remove sediment, right?
These are basic life tasks that everyone can and should do as a basic functional adult adulting 'properly' and 'correctly' with best outcomes more important than finding/eating good pizza, but probably don't. People just can't sweat all of the details of daily life, and they definitely can't for basic daily sustenance nor entertainment, and that is OK and actually a good thing.
Talladega Nights is extremely mediocre no matter how it's ranked/placed. Elvis movies weren't meant to be remembered 60 years later, they were meant to give people a happy afternoon in the moment, and by their success at the box office it looks they did that. A fleeting moment of happiness doesn't need to be a 60 year artifact. It can be just a fleeting moment of happiness. (But the fact you are talking about them 60 years later actually kinda says something, doesn't it?)
Domino's is better than the majority of rich people ate throughout history ate. It's delicious. The fact that there is something more delicious doesn't change that. It's hot and comforting and comes right to my door quickly and consistently in a way I can afford. I'm not going to enjoy it less just because... something else exists. Something else ALWAYS exists. It's a bajillion times better than a bowl of oatmeal which is the other staple food I can have for the same effort.
Spotify/Netflix's algorithmic generated music/shows are better than the majority of entertainment throughout history. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyLsO6LpLSI
Temu mass produced textiles washed and cleaned before each use are better than the 'we'll just brush it a bit and it's clean' fancy, worn all winter for 10 years with just some brushing, wool suit 'custom tailored' to fit a now much changed body.
Take a breath and appreciate rather than critic. The world is AMAZING. Anyone can be a critic. It's the easiest and least regarded job in the world. Ever had a QA department that thought their job was to be critics instead of do actual QA? They were always the worst/most useless/annoying QA department when it came to actual good software. This whole Netflix hate thing is the same. If Netflix did somehow turn into an art house it would SUCK at it's intended purpose. We need fleeting moments of entertainment as much as we need 60 year relic films.
The thing that bothers me about most contemporary praise for Idiocracy is the failure to view it through the appropriate historical lens, and so most of the praise ends up being shallow in the retconned context. Idiocracy was created in a specific time period—the same one that American Dad! was born in. (NB: "born" being the crucial word in the previous sentence.) It's possible in 2021—or 2011, even—to have watched and enjoyed both for the first time and still not understand why either were created.
I'm seeing more references to Idiocracy now on social media because of Don't Look Up's recent release (compared to, say, how frequently Idiocracy was mentioned last month). There's a lot of problems with Don't Look Up that make for it not being an example of greatness or even very-goodness, but one thing in particular in comparison to Idiocracy are the movies' protagonists. In Idiocracy, Not Sure is a pretty average guy—maybe even a little dumb. This is what the writers of Don't Look Up missed out on. Idiocracy is smart people writing about about a dumb-to-average "hero" because the egos of those involved (the creators and their audience) don't require him to be bigger than they are. In contrast, Don't Look Up is a movie written by people who are as smart as Not Sure is dumb, trying to write for characters who are supposed to be smarter than the writers themselves and the people who are supposed to enjoy the movie the most.
Some reviews called Don't Look Up smug and sanctimonious—and they're right. With Idiocracy and Don't Look Up, the humility and lack thereof, respectively, when comparing the two accounts for a lot of why Don't Look Up is worse than it should be. (Given what Don't Look Up tries to do, it should do it better than Talladega Nights does, for example, but it doesn't.) Also accounting for a lot of what made Don't Look Up a not so great way of cribbing from Idiocracy is that Idiocracy was taking aim at the zeitgeist, whereas Don't Look Up is a very safe movie to make.
Well, at least if they are going to do evil we can rest assured that they aren't very good at it. Speakers in the woods with wolf noises? This sounds like a bad Disney halloween movie. Or that episode of Father Ted. Or that PSA in Talladega Nights about the packs of vicious dogs who control most major cities.
I'm concerned about the negative portrayal of wolves. No matter who is saying it, making people overly afraid of wolves endangers the wolves. Even in wolf country, you are still far more likely to be shot by a hunter than eaten by a wolfpack. Wolves are to be respected, not demonized.
Wow! Talladega nights was the first movie I saw on a Bluray setup. (PS3 at a friends.) I was shocked at how badly mastered it was. It sounds exactly like that problem. Everything was washed out.
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
probably not my 3 favorites but they quickly come to mind when i think favorite movies: evil dead 2, citizen kane, talladega nights