Monday, August 07, 2006

Talladega Nights Hits a Nerve

My daughter and I went to see Will Farrell’s new movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, this week. I thought it was laugh-out-loud funny and appreciated the satire of this NASCAR parody. My daughter thought it was just silly.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Farrell’s character said grace at the table. It was an in-your-face satire of the Bible Belt, and one that is well overdue.

Ted Baehr reviewed the film on Movieguide.org, which claims it is a, “… ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices.”

Baehr took no prisoners. He hated the film and called for a boycott of it, saying, “A satire of the NASCAR racing scene, the movie is a racist, bigoted work that ridicules the Bible Belt, Southern white men, Christianity, Jesus Christ, the family, and American masculinity.”

But it was drop-dead funny. And if the southern conservatives can’t take a little ribbing, then let them make a film making fun of mainstream intelligent Americans.

Baehr also had this to say of Farrell. “Apparently, Will Farrell, who co-wrote the movie, is saying that anyone who believes in such moral absolutes, such as the biblical admonitions against fornication and homosexuality, or the moral superiority of Christianity, is an idiot.”

I don’t know what Mr. Farrell has to say about that, but I’ll come right out and say it myself. Anyone who does believe in the moral superiority of Christianity and in the concept of absolute morality is either exceptionally ignorant or an incredibly self-righteous pompous ass, like Baehr.

3 comments:

Jerry Wilson said...

Good s hood. You hit the nail on the head in your last sentence. It WAS man who created religion, which is why I so deplore it, whether it be Christian, Islamic, or any other (but mainly those two). I believe Jesus was a great leader and a man ahead of his time. But he was still a man. What gets me most about religion is that real intelligent grown up human beings who are logical and even skeptitcal in every other way that matters will swallow the myth of Christianity or Islam hook line and sinker without so much as questioning it. And that would be fine, too, except that so many of them want to infiltrate the government and the courts so that the rest of us have to follow their morally superior slant, whether we believe as they do or not. Consider Bush on stem cells.

Sheila said...

Hey Jerry,
I wrote about this movie too which I loved and I'm not even a Will Ferrell fan. Then I came across Dr. Ted Baehr's review and had to write some more and then I got so worked up, I had to write even more. I've just started my blog, alabamakitchensink.blogspot, and I'm spending way too much time on it.

While I don't agree with much Dr. B said, I did find his extreme views worthy of exploring. I even wrote to the Montgomery Advertiser forum guys to see what they thought on the subject of stereotypes of Southern white men, and every one of them so far has written he wasn't offended and took the ribbing in stride.

My blog today deals more with the religion issue. I'll be writing more on this angle of life in the South.

Gunfighter said...

Talladega Nights is a movie... just a movie.

I'm a Christian.

I live in Virginia.

I pray regularly.

blah, blah, blah.

I think some people really need to lighten up.