FunBlog

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.
– Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936

As can be seen from the opening quote, this is an evil, wicked movie.

Ricky Bobby was born in a car travelling 100 mph as his speed-crazed father drove past the hospital. As a boy he drove everyone crazy by constantly saying “I want to go fast, I want to go fast!” Naturally he grew up to achieve fame and fortune as a NASCAR driver.

Ricky gained all the trappings of material success. He had a big house, a hot trashy wife, and two adorable trash-talking sons named “Walker” and “Texas Ranger”. A simple patriotic man, he would engage in interminable debates over whether it is better to pray to baby Jesus or grown-up Jesus.

But Ricky’s life took a turn for the worse on the day that he met his nemisis and arch-enemy: Jean Girrard, a French Formula One driver. A French existentialist Formula One driver. A gay French existentialist Formula One driver.

This is not a deep or uplifting movie. It is a movie about fast living and fast driving and fast women and product placement. (Loads and loads of product placement. This is NASCAR, right?) It is a movie that bombards you with absurdities until you are helpless with laughter.

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, drug references and brief comic violence.

When I go to see a movie in an art-house theater I know I’m taking the risk of coming out feeling depressed. The opening of this one had me a bit worried:

• A motivational speaker gives a rousing talk about how to be a winner and not a loser, to an audience of about seven people.
• An old man snorts a couple of lines.
• A little girl watches a videotape of a beauty contest and imitates the contestants’ moves.
• A middle-aged woman goes to the hospital to pick up her brother who has attempted suicide. She brings him home and tells him he has to share a bedroom with his teen aged nephew, who reads Nietzsche and doesn’t speak.

Things get progressively stranger as the family decides to embark on a road trip to help the young daughter enter a beauty contest.

It ends up being a very funny movie. It isn’t particularly original. The basic elements of the road trip and the lovable losers (who in the final analysis probably aren’t really losers at all) will be familiar from a lot of films. Still it kept me laughing and I would generally recommend it.

Even though one of the main characters is seven years old, I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that young. It’s more suitable for teenagers and up. It includes bad language, drug use (presented in a disapproving light) and “mature themes”.