Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)

Adam McKay's 2006 study of a NASCAR driver who cannot lose gracefully arrives with a title that promises balladry and delivers a man screaming his own name into a camera. The satirical target is not the sport but the sponsorship economy wrapped around it, and the jokes about Applebee's, Wonder Bread, and the Dennit family's bored ownership land with a precision that suggests genuine familiarity. That the film never converts this mockery into an indictment is its saving grace. It likes the machinery it is teasing. A comedy that wanted to eat the rich would have to stop ordering the mozzarella sticks.

The most culturally forward element here is Sacha Baron Cohen's Jean Girard, a French Formula One driver with a husband named Gregory, presented with affection and a complete absence of panic. The climactic kiss between Girard and Ricky Bobby is staged as an absurd gesture of respect, not a punchline at anyone's expense, which for a 2006 studio comedy is unusually relaxed. Elsewhere the film is content to be a product of its moment. Leslie Bibb's Carley exists to be traded between teammates. Michael Clarke Duncan brings dignity to the pit crew, and the film asks nothing of his race, which is neither a failing nor a virtue, merely a fact.

What the film does not attempt is instruction. There is no sermon on climate, no lesson about bodies, no diagnosis of the mind, no revision of the historical record. The closing moral, that family outlasts the checkered flag, is delivered with a shrug and then immediately undercut by everyone leaving for Applebee's. The result is a broad, silly, occasionally brilliant comedy with almost nothing to teach us and no apparent desire to try. In an era of films that arrive with a syllabus attached, that restraint reads as a luxury.