REEL CRITICS -- DOUBLE TAKE:

Intense and very realistic scenes of hot rod racing share the screen with ridiculous goofball comedy in Will Farrell’s latest effort. But the real satire of “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is that frenzied NASCAR fans are both the target audience and the butt of its most sarcastic jokes.

With tongue-in-cheek, this wildly uneven farce skewers the simplistic lifestyle of re-state racing fans while trying to amuse them at the same time.

It does this by constantly pushing the envelope of its PG-13 rating. Crude sexual humor, drug references and insults to grandparents are spouted by 10-year-old boys. Farrell, as Ricky Bobby, finds plot developments that require him to run around nearly naked displaying his hairy paunch.

His chief rival on the race track is Jean Girard, an openly gay Formula One driver from France played with impish delight by the strange comic actor, Sacha Baron Cohen of “Da Ali G Show” fame.

But the real breakthrough in “Talledega Nights” is the constant use of blatant product placement. Like the cars and uniforms of NASCAR drivers, every scene in this movie is plastered with the endorsements, logos and merchandise of corporate sponsors.

The advertising is so relentless, it becomes its own comic sub plot. But this all plays out like a sequence of five-minute skits that Farrell might have done on “Saturday Night Live.”

Some skits work, and some don’t, but there are a few big laughs in the mix. The large crowd at my screening laughed more often than I did. If you liked “Old School” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” you’ll like this too.

“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is the love child of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, the same team who gave us the hysterical “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

It’s a goodhearted, un-PC spoof of the world of racing, good ol’ Southern living and extreme product placement. The film is a little too long and sometimes the jokes stall out, but overall, it’s firing on all cylinders.

Ricky is a wildly successful driver, a happily married man and proud father of trash-talkin’ boys Walker and Texas Ranger.

Enter Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), a gay, French Formula One driver sporting the worst accent since Pepe Le Pew.

He is so cool, he sips macchiatos and reads Camus while he zooms ahead of Ricky on the track, and the heated rivalry between the two men leads to a radical change in Ricky’s fortunes.

Ferrell, as Ricky Bobby, still makes you laugh when he again runs around in his tighty-whities. Few actors are that willing to look so bad in order to be so good.

He is also generous in sharing the laughs. John C. Reilly is stellar as Ricky’s best buddy, Cal, who’s never allowed to win a race. The scene where they gather round the dinner table to say grace is divinely goofy.

Molly Shannon is fun as the team owner’s cocktail-guzzling, randy wife. Her look of bemused boredom is priceless.

Also outstanding are Jane Lynch and Gary Cole as Ricky’s parents, Lucy and Reese. Reese is probably the only man to get bounced from both his son’s school on career day and Applebee’s (the Bobby family’s favorite spot for gourmet dining).

There’s so much to be thankful for.

Tonight, make it a ‘Talladega’ nightLittle Ricky Bobby, legendary NASCAR driver, was born in a speeding stock car when his daddy did a 360 near the hospital. Needless to say, Ricky has felt the need for speed ever since.