If you asked someone to guess what director Christopher Nolan’s favorite movie is, most people would assume it was something serious, maybe a film that plays around with time in some unique, thought-provoking way. And sure enough, when Nolan was asked about his favorite movies in a 2023 interview, he did mention the renowned works of director Stanley Kubrick. “2001: A Space Odyssey” in particular made the top of his list, a fact that should come as no surprise to any “Interstellar” fans out there.

But Nolan’s more questionable shoutout was to the 2006 movie “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” It’s a movie about a racecar driver played by Will Ferrell who learns to be a tiny bit less of a selfish egomaniac. It’s a far sillier story than anything Nolan himself would ever want to direct, but whenever Nolan catches it on TV, he knows he’ll have to stick around with it to the end. 

“‘Talladega Nights,’ I’m never gonna be able to switch that up,” Nolan said. Quoting a famous repeated line from it, he added, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Nolan’s love of “Talladega Nights” admittedly doesn’t seem very on-brand for him. Nolan is a British director known for being a little too cold and serious, while “Talladega Nights” is an aggressively American movie that is so stupid at times that viewers can barely believe what they’re watching. It’s a movie where Ricky Bobby tries to regain his racing mojo by driving his car blindfolded down a residential street, only to immediately crash his car straight into someone’s house. (There are no repercussions for this behavior.) It’s a movie with a random subplot where Ricky baselessly believes he’s a paraplegic, and another subplot where Ricky’s kids transform from godless heathens to well-behaved Christians.

Perhaps what Nolan appreciates most is how dense a film “Talladega Nights” is. It’s hard to believe it’s only got a runtime of 108 minutes, because on top of the main plot, there are so many running gags thrown in, so many character arcs going on outside of Ricky Bobby’s. Some moments are funny not only because they’re absurd but because they’re suspiciously well-written; the context of Amy Adams’ character’s big monologue may be silly, but the command of language from whoever wrote it is undeniably strong, and Adams delivers the whole thing as if she’s planning to get an Oscar out of it. Nolan loves a big swing, and “Talladega Nights” is full of them:

There’s also the fact that Ricky Bobby is exactly the sort of tragic, tortured figure that Nolan tends to gravitate towards. The poor guy reaches the height of the sport he’s dedicated his life to, only to be spurned by that world and callously cast aside. Ricky Bobby is, in many ways, the Robert J. Oppenheimer of the NASCAR world. The two may have excelled in different fields, but I’m sure they both could relate to each other’s harrowing life tales.