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He first made a splash on television playing a cheerleader. Now, audiences are cheering for him.

Like Dan Akroyd, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, and Mike Myers before him, Will Ferrell is following in the footsteps of the most successful Saturday Night Live alumni, releasing box-office-topping comedies bound to become lasting favorites. Films like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and his latest—Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby—mix clever sketch-comedy and a generous helping of the absurd, provoking us to laugh at a wide variety of egoists, braggarts, bigots, and fools who are oblivious to their own lunacy. Just as Anchorman traced the fall and rise of a television newsman in the 1970s, Talladega Nights, made with the help of NASCAR, chronicles the fall and rise of a racing champion.

And yet, while Ferrell sends many away holding their sides in laughter, he's causing others—including some Christian film critics—to hold their heads in dismay instead. (One went so far as to call it one of the most "blasphemous, politically correct major movies ever released by a major Hollywood studio.")

But Todd Hertz (Christianity Today Movies) finds it amusing, if somewhat unsatisfying. "Is it funny? Oh yes. While not as funny as Anchorman … Ferrell's over-the-top, no-holds-barred wackiness carries the movie. He again falls back on his trademark Doofus Everyman role, the cartoonish and innocently aloof exaggeration of a real person set in a world of absurdity. The script has some clever moments . … However, the laughs don't add up to much. They don't stick with you, because there's no meaning behind them. Instead, the movie is just 105 minutes of bawdy absurdity for absurdity's sake."

Stephen McGarvey (Crosswalk) writes, "Rather than being mean-spirited Talladega is ultimately kind to its simpleminded characters, and all demographics represented (except for perhaps the French). Unfortunately, the movie—like most of Will Ferrell's films—has decided that you can't be funny without also being over-the-top vulgar. It's too bad since Talladega Nights could have been one of this year's funniest."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says it's "only fitfully amusing . … Ferrell is a gifted physical comedian, but his goofily entertaining performance feels like a pastiche of many of his past roles. There's not much under the hood when it comes to story, and the script by Ferrell and longtime collaborator Adam McKay (who also directs) hits plenty of speed bumps in the form of juvenile jokes by turns vulgar, irreverent, or just unfunny."

Tom Neven (Plugged In) says, "Sure, [Ferrell's] absurdist streak can be pretty funny, but based on his previous collaboration with director Adam McKay on Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I should have known that anything coming from their sophomoric minds would be long on crude, juvenile sexual humor and gross-out gags. And, true enough, we get more of the same. Lots more of the same."

Most mainstream critics seem to be enjoying Ferrell's high-speed, high-spirited comedy.

There's a classic Gary Larson sketch in which cows are standing in a pasture on their hind legs, casually visiting each other when one of them own points down the road and shouts, "Car!!"

As if inspired by this, writer/director Steve Oedekerk's newest animated comedy, Barnyard, concerns farm animals who walk, talk, and interact like humans … so long as the humans aren't looking. (Read CT Movies' interview with Oedekerk here.) But according to Christian film critics, there is more to this animated feature than simple gags.

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August (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50