It’s controversial to put “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” ahead of “Anchorman,” but here’s the thing: it just is a better told story. Drifting further away from slapstick and closer to cutting satire, Ferrell plays a vain NASCAR driver who has to crawl his way back to the top after a series of setbacks.
This movie established Ferrell and John C. Reilly as an unstoppable comedic duo, and it also proved that McKay could do more than cut a scene of dudes riffing together; the racing sequences pop with an impressive amount of verve and dexterity. Many of the jokes still hit today, with some of them landing even harder than they did more than a decade ago.
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