 | | Will Ferrell has made a career out of stupid movies. Credit: Suzanne Hanover/S.M.P.S.P. |
By Rick Houston, Special to NASCAR.COM
December 12, 2006
01:53 PM EST (18:53 GMT)
• NASCAR in Hollywood -- 1960s and '70s It's a long, long way from Fireball 500 to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, in both time and content. Although NASCAR has only recently taken an active role in promoting itself on the big screen, stock-car racing is nothing new to Hollywood. Many of the movies have been silly, a few serious and some downright awful. Leading up to Tuesday's release of Talladega Nights on DVD, NASCAR.COM will take a look at the stock car racing-themed movies currently available on DVD. In the menatime, let's review movies released from the 1980s through today. Title: Six Pack
Starring: Kenny Rogers, Diane Lane, Erin Gray, Barry Corbin, Anthony Michael Hall
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Year of Release: 1982
Rating: PG
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Three As movies go, Six Pack is as harmless as they come. Brewster Baker (Rogers) has seen better days as a short-track driver, and six orphans are being forced by the crooked local sheriff (Corbin) to strip cars for spare parts. After the kids lay waste to his car, he catches them following after an obligatory Dukes of Hazzard-style chase. Come to think of it ... was there a television show or movie in the early 1980s that didn't have a Dukes-style car chase? After that, the hellions -- led by oldest Heather, the brainy Doc (Lane and Hall, respectively) and Swifty, the foul-mouthed predecessor to Walker and Texas Ranger of Talladega Nights infamy -- become Brewster's pit crew. He reconnects with Lila (Gray) and they all live happily ever after. Really, that's about the long and short of Six Pack. Hey, at least Rogers doesn't spontaneously break out into song onscreen, ala Elvis or Frankie. He is, however, all over the soundtrack. It's a decent tradeoff. Cameos: Buddy Baker congratulates Brewster on qualifying for the big race at Atlanta. You'll have to look closely, but a young Bill Elliott can be seen in the Atlanta garage helping push his car out of its stall. Veteran motorsports journalist Chris Economacki appears as a TV reporter at the end of the movie. Racing Footage: Early 1980s-vintage footage from Atlanta is included. --- Title: Stroker Ace
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Loni Anderson, Jim Nabors, Ned Beatty, Parker Stevenson, Bubba Smith
Studio: Warner Brothers
Year of Release: 1983
Rating: PG
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Five Review: Stroker Ace is the greatest racing movie of all time, bar none. There. I said it. Where Talladega Nights continuously goes for one cheap laugh after another while at the same time trying desperately to serve as a marketing tool for the sport, Stroker Ace is simply a breezy, light comedy. That's all it is, and that's all it pretends to be. It doesn't attempt to serve two masters -- NASCAR and the public. Stroker Ace also comes pretty doggone close to the way things actually are in the garage. Think about it. Stroker (Reynolds) has to jump through hoops for his sponsor, and he'll do just about anything to get out of his contract. Sound familiar? He has the hots for his PR rep (Anderson) ... uh ... better not go there. Hal Needham directed Stroker Ace, and at the time, he and Reynolds co-owned the car driven by Harry Gant on the Winston Cup tour. The familiarity with his surroundings shows. While Stroker is certainly a caricature, there's a sense of respect shown for the sport's actual drivers. Maybe that's why so many of them -- including Tim Richmond, Dale Earnhardt, Cale Yarborough, Ricky Rudd, Kyle Petty and Benny Parsons, Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett and Terry Labonte -- chose to participate. There actually was a time when Earnhardt, Rudd and Petty might've been able to race dinner carts through the halls of a motel, when they could've had a little good ol' boy fun at and around the race track. And that's exactly what Stroker Ace is ... fun. Cameos: Announcers Bill Connell, Bill Dollar, Chris Economacki, David Hobbs and Ken Squier show up in the movie, as do famed beauty queen Linda Vaughn, "The Hat Guy" Bill Brodrick and longtime NASCAR flagman Harold Kinder. That's also Johnny Hayes, for many years a fixture in the sport as a representative of U.S. Tobacco's Skoal sponsorship, who fires a well-aimed blast of air up Anderson's skirt. Whether it counts as a cameo or not, but also seen in the movie are a couple of mock copies of Grand National Scene, the predecessor to the leading trade publication now known as NASCAR Scene. Racing Footage: Clips from Daytona, Talladega and Charlotte are used. --- Title: Days of Thunder
Starring: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, Michael Rooker
Studio: Paramount
Year of Release: 1990
Rating: PG-13
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Four There are a lot of things wrong with Days of Thunder. • First of all, cars that hit the wall that hard do not finish, much less win, races. • Drivers do not smugly announce either on television or over their radios for one and all to hear, "I'm gonna put him in the wall." • Drivers and crew chiefs do not travel to and from races in the lounges of the team transporter. Nobody travels to and from races in the lounge of a team transporter. But wait, there's more: • When a car is at speed, the hammer has already been dropped. • When Rowdy (Rooker) introduces Cole (Cruise) to his wife, she says, "Hi Tom." • Crew chiefs never spot for their drivers from pit road, and especially not at Daytona. • Said crew chiefs are also never allowed in the garage by themselves to give their cars a pep talk. • When a car spins out, it does not change numbers and paint schemes in mid-slide. And some more ... • When there's a 20-car pileup between turns three and four at Daytona, drivers in the middle of the backstretch do not continue to pile full blast into the middle of the mess, not unless they're (insert name of least favorite driver here). • Drivers and crew chiefs do not chat back and forth while the driver is battling for the win on the last lap of the Daytona 500. • And finally, cars that win races are not ... I repeat, not ... built in barns. For all its faults, however, you still remember the lines. "Rubbin', son, is racin'." "Hit the pace car." "You're very quick." -- Claire (Kidman) "You ought to see me drive." -- Cole To actually like Days of Thunder requires a definite suspension of disbelief. You've got to be willing to go along with the joke and accept the fact that Days of Thunder is pretty much just Top Gun on a race track. Love the movie or hate it, but helped bring NASCAR that much more into the national consciousness. Admit it. You've driven into a race track on an early race morning and at least thought of the music that plays at the beginning of the movie. You might not have actually hummed the tune, but you've thought of it. Haven't you? C'mon ... there's no shame in admitting it. Is there? Cameos: The voice of Bob Jenkins can be heard as the PA announcer at Daytona, and the voices of Benny Parsons and Ned Jarrett set the scene during the movie's first race. Dr. Jerry Punch interviews Cole, crew chief Harry Hogge (Duvall) and team owner Tim Daland (Quaid) in Victory Lane, and also reports on the formation of Daland's second team. Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett and Rusty Wallace are interviewed about Cole's comeback in the Daytona 500. Racing Footage: Clips from a number of different tracks are incorporated into the film, but they seem to be interchangeable. Rockingham becomes Talladega ... or was it Daytona? It's hard to keep track. The same static garage scene is used at least three times, at supposedly different tracks. --- Title: 3
Starring: Barry Pepper, J.K. Simmons, Elisabeth Mitchell
Studio: ESPN Original Entertainment
Year of Release: 2004
Rating: TV14
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Four 3 is worth picking up on DVD if for other reason than the effort that ESPN put into its production. The film itself is certainly worth watching. The movie hits the major points in the life of Dale Earnhardt (Pepper), a man who rose from nothing to heights previously unimagined in NASCAR. 3 doesn't gloss over the harsh realities of Earnhardt's early career, when he went through two divorces and incredible financial troubles. It is hard to imagine, though, some of the one-on-one dialogue actually taking place. At times, it alternates between sappy and just this side of preachy. Something should also be said for the sheer number of historic cars that were recreated for the movie, everything from Earnhardt's infamous first pink K-2 car to Donnie Allison's Hawaiian Tropic mount. Another thought ... actress Elizabeth Mitchell got to marry Dale Earnhardt in 3 and Saint Nick in The Santa Clause 2. Now that's cool. The only other major problem with 3 is that few, if any, of its actors look much like the real-life people they portray. Pepper isn't nearly as stocky as Earnhardt was later in life. The guys who play Darrell Waltrip and Richard Childress look nothing like the real deals. Hey, at least they were guys who played Waltrip and Childress. That's something, I guess. The special features on the two-disc DVD are by far the best of any racing-related movie currently available, Disc One includes a 36-minute documentary on the making of the movie, and another 43-minute documentary on Earnhardt's life and legacy. As good as those are, it gets even better on the second disc. Interviews with Earnhardt -- including one in the ESPN at-track studio hours after his 1998 Daytona 500 win -- are included. You get the last several laps of the infamous Bristol race in the fall of 1999, when Earnhardt spun Terry Labonte coming off Turn 2 on the last lap. You also get the entire IROC race at Michigan the same year, when Earnhardt beat his son by mere inches. Finally, two of Earnhardt's full-length appearances on ESPN shows -- 2 Minute Drill and Ultimate Outdoors -- are here as well. Cameos: Andy Hillenburg -- the popular owner and operator of the Fast Track High Performance Driving School who has also made several Cup, Busch and Truck series starts -- served as a driving consultant for 3. In the movie, he plays a gun-totin' Deke, who chases Pepper away from a race track early in the movie. Racing Footage: Numerous historical clips from the ESPN archives are used. --- Title: Herbie Fully Loaded
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Michael Keaton, Matt Dillon, Justin Long, Breckin Meyer
Studio: Disney
Year of Release: 2005
Rating: G
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Three Will somebody somewhere please show Herbie some love? For a car as beloved as Herbie was supposed to have been during Disney's original four-movie series in the late 1960s and early '70s, he surely changed hands an awful lot. He never had the same driver two movies in a row, and in this latest reincarnation, Herbie Fully Loaded, Herbie gets yet another owner and driver -- Maggie Peyton (Lohan). She finds him in, of all places, a junkyard. Figures. Come to think of it, where is the love for Herbie? In the end, you've gotta wonder who -- or what -- Maggie will wind up dumping him for. After getting injured while street racing, Maggie graduates from college and has a gig with ESPN lined up when she and Herbie first cross paths. Her brother Ray Jr. (Meyer) is a Nextel Cup driver, and not a very good one, her dad (Keaton), Ray Sr., the car owner. When Ray Jr. is hurt during qualifying at California, it's up to Maggie -- and Herbie -- to save the day. It's a story that should keep the attention of kids up to around 10 or 12, and today's improved computer-generated imagery certainly makes Herbie that much more animated. He's winks, he grins, he blushes. He makes faces at Trip Murphy (Dillon), the reigning Nextel Cup champion and the film's bad guy. He climbs and races along the fence at California. Cool. Among the disc's special features is a nearly 14-minute featurette entitled, "A Day at the Races," in which Truck Series driver Deborah Renshaw gives a few elementary lessons on the sport. The segment also focuses on Lohan's introduction to the sport at the Richard Petty Driving Experience. Cameos: Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson won't win any acting awards for their performances in Fully Loaded. Dale Jarrett and Tony Stewart also appear. Allen Bestwick, Benny Parsons and Bob Dillner report on Herbie, as does Stuart Scott. Finally, Cup and Busch series part-timer Andy Hillenburg makes an appearance as a crew chief. Racing Footage: Herbie actually joins the field for the pace laps of Busch and Cup races at California Speedway. Fully Loaded also incorporates actual clips from those races in the film. --- Title: Dare to Dream: The Alan Kulwicki Story
Starring: Brad Weber, Bryan Madson, Thomas Schunk, Ralph Garcia, Jason Melcher, Leslie Meyer
Studio: DDI Films
Year of Release: 2005
Rating: PG-13
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Zero My dad has always insisted that if you can't find anything good to say about something, it's better to not say anything at all. So, with that in mind ... when it comes to Dare to Dream: The Alan Kulwicki Story ... well ... yeah. That's about it. No. Sorry, Pops. I just can't let this one go. There's really no end to how incredibly bad Dare to Dream is. The acting is horrible, the script nothing more than one cliché after another and the production bare bones at the very best. Here's how bad the acting is ... during a breakfast scene when Kuwicki (Weber, who also executive produced) tells his team owner that he's going South to "take on the big boys," at one point, it looks and sounds for all the world like Weber is reading off a script hidden next to his plate. He alternates between looking at the owner and the plate ... the owner and the plate ... the owner and the plate, his voice rising and falling each and every time. The guy who plays Tom Roberts, Kulwicki's longtime public relations representative, should be sued for character assassination. Kyle Petty, as portrayed in Dare to Dream, looks and acts more like the comedian Gallagher. There should've been a disclaimer during the open credits, something along the lines of "Any resemblance to professional acting is only through sheer dumb luck." The movie reportedly was made on a budget of $500,000, and it shows. Not even the onscreen image is consistent, alternating at various points between film and video stock. There's one scene that's supposed to take place during a race at Dover, and it's so decidedly not Dover. The stands are empty. There's virtually nothing in the infield. There are trees, not grandstands, all the way around the track. And please tell me that Kulwicki isn't really shown tousling a kid's hair and asking everyone if they'd received all the autographs they wanted as he leaves the airport terminal to board his fateful flight. If there's a high point to the DVD, it's the special features. Petty is shown during Kulwicki's induction into the Wisconsin Hall of Fame. Friends and family reflect on Kulwicki's career in a 14-minute featurette. Bloopers from Zerex commercials featuring Kulwicki and Rusty Wallace are included as well. Cameos: Father Dale Grubba, a longtime racing photojournalist and writer, gives the departing Weber some advice and also hears his confession. The voice of Eddie Gossage, currently the president of Texas Motor Speedway, offers Weber a place to stay when he moves South. Travis Kvapil plays a crew member. Humpy Wheeler puts together a sponsorship for the driver. Bill Elliott is shown in a grainy video clip talking to Weber. Racing Footage: Brief clips from Kulwicki's career are used sparingly. --- Title: Cars
Starring: Voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Cheech Marin, George Carlin, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton
Studio: Disney Pixar
Year of Release: 2006
Rating: G
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): Five NASCAR's strategy to market the sport through Hollywood covered virtually every major demographic in the last couple of years. Cars catered to kids, Herbie Fully Loaded to those in their tween years and Talladega Nights to brain-numbed goobers in their teens and 20s. Could some kind of racing-themed Cocoon be far behind for the geriatric set? Cars works the best of any of the three recently released NASCAR flicks, and on a number of different levels. The most obvious way in which it succeeds is in appearance. According to the Internet Movie Database, even though the computers used to generate the film's images ran four times faster than those used on Disney Pixar's 2004 feature The Incredibles, it took an average of 17 processor hours to complete each and every frame of the film. The results are stunning. Some of the racing sequences in Cars appear far more realistic than any of the staged segments in Days of Thunder or Stroker Ace. Secondly, it's a decent story with great characters. Lightning McQueen (Wilson) is young hotshot racecar who eventually learns a little humility and respect for his elders. The tractor tipping scene? Big hit. Mater (Larry the Cable Guy)? Really big hit. Finally, the characters of Doc Hudson (Newman) and The King (Richard Petty) are nice tips of the hat to the sport's history. The Fabulous Hudson Hornet was a phenomenally successful machine in the 1950s, and the winged Superbird that Petty drove in the early 1970s was one of the most beautiful cars ever. Cameos: Richard and Lynda Petty lend their voices to The King and Mrs. The King. The vocal talents of Dale Earnhardt Jr. are also featured, as are Darrell Waltrip (as Darrell Cartrip -- Car ... trip, get it?), Humpy Wheeler (as Tex), Michael Schumacher (as ... well ... Michael Schumacher Ferrari) and Mario Andretti (as Mario Andretti). Racing Footage: Obviously, none, but another factoid on the IMDb says The King's accident at the end of the movie is an almost frame-by-frame recreation of Petty's tumbling accident in the 1988 Daytona 500. --- Title: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby Unrated and Uncut! Edition
Starring: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sacha Baron Cohen
Studio: Columbia
Year of Release: 2006
Rating: PG-13
Lug Nut Rating (Out of Five): One There's a 5 1/2-minute special feature on the DVD of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby Unrated and Uncut! Edition that focuses on Walker and Texas Ranger, the smart-mouthed sons of the film's title character. It's a hysterical segment that compresses clips and alternate takes of the youngsters into a rapid-fire parade of insults and comebacks. It's also by far the best part of the entire DVD, including the train wreck that calls itself a movie. By the time Walker (Houston Tumlin) and Texas Ranger (Grayson Russell) get a line in during the movie, the senses of anybody with a maturity level past that of a tire iron have been dulled beyond caring. If producers pitched the project to prospective studios with the six words, "Will Ferrell as a NASCAR driver," its review can be summed up in just five: "Not a very good movie." If you're looking for a couple hours' worth of high-brow racing entertainment -- for Citizen Kane on wheels -- this ain't it. If you're looking for entertainment, period, this ain't it, either. Other than the two kids, there's just nothing remotely humorous about Talladega Nights. Ferrell has made a career out of stupid movies, but Talladega Nights can't even aspire to being stupid. It's just incredibly unfunny. What, exactly, is funny about Ricky Bobby thinking he's on fire, stripping down to his underwear and running around like an idiot? Nothing. What's funny about him repeating the act later in the movie? Again, nothing. What's funny about Ricky Bobby making required sponsor mentions while saying grace? Nope ... nothing. What's funny about ... never mind. Then again, very few ad campaigns are all that satisfying. There are far too many points in the film where it isn't hard to imagine corporate backers huddling with the film's makers, trying to figure out just how many more sponsor plugs could be crammed into the two-hour infomercial. Wonder Bread ... Old Spice ... Fig Newtons ... Powerade ... Perrier ... Nextel ... Applebee's ... Enough already. One of the truly disappointing things about Talladega Nights is that producer Judd Apatow is capable of so much better. He was the executive producer of Freaks and Geeks, a short-lived television show from several years ago that nevertheless gave the most accurate and heart-felt portrayal of high school life ever put to film. F&G was a once-in-a-lifetime diamond of a project, but in Talladega Nights, Apatow appears to have done nothing more than mail in his effort. One last thought. If Talladega Nights was playing in the middle of the woods and nobody was around to see it, would it still be this bad? Just wondering ... Cameos: Was there anybody in the Nextel Cup garage who didn't appear in Talladega Nights? Let's see ... Dale Earnhardt Jr. made an appearance. So did the FOX broadcasting team of Mike Joy, Larry McReynolds and Darrell Waltrip. Not to be left out, NBC's crew of Bill Weber, Benny Parsons and Wally Dallenbach also made the big screen. Veteran broadcasters Dick Berggren, Bob Jenkins and Rick Benjamin were included as well. Finally, Elvis Costello and Mos Def showed up, too. Racing Footage: There are very brief shots of actual race footage from Talladega and Charlotte, but most on-track action is staged. | 
