Remember the six months before American troops invaded Iraq. The French and German secret services were claiming that no credible evidence existed to show that Saddam was close to producing nuclear weapons. Colin Powel, in what became a reputation destroying speech at the UN, claimed that the U.S. had precisely this smoking-gun kind of evidence.  After the speech, the French were not still convinced and blocked an U.N. vote that would have given U.N. approval for a U.S. military strike against Iraq. Some Americans were so upset by what they perceived to as unwarranted French obstinacy that they started to a movement to rename

Will Ferrell and his co-author Adam McKay use this background to stage a fictitious French-American rivalry in the all-American NASCAR racing. Talladega Nights is a stupid movie, but unlike Ferrell