Director:
Adam McKay
Starring:
Will Ferrell
Christina Applegate
Paul Rudd
Steve Carell
David Koechner
Fred Willard
Release: 9 Jul. 04
IMDb
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Anchorman: The Legend of Ron
Burgundy
BY: DAVID PERRY
In a time before cable, Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) was the toast
of San Diego. Along with his faithful news team, he brought enough human
interests stories to the homes of his faithful viewers to warm the heart of
Howard Beale. Sure, viewing him on the news brought the absolute surety that
Burgundy was an idiot, but it was hypnotic in his stupidity like watching
reality programming. Though the film is set in the 1970s, there’s still some
reality to this: in Knoxville, Tennessee, the top rated news show, Live at
Five, has two airheads who mysteriously mesmerize anyone unlucky enough to
accidentally fall upon the show.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is amazingly able to channel the
spellbinding stupidity of shows like Live at Five (I’m certain there are
incarnations around the country). Unfortunately, that’s when the film is at
its best, making a mockery of local news human interest stories and the
forced camaraderie that the “team” is supposed to have. Even its
proto-misogynist debate over having a female anchor works splendidly with
the rest of the picture. The main problem, then, is that the jokes that fill
the rest of the film are mostly non-sequiturs, the type that Will Ferrell
has always done well with, but rarely makes much of a mark playing. He’s on
top of his game with doing parody, like his best caricatures on Saturday
Night Live, when he’s just running at the mouth with jokes based more on
their inexplicable existence than their actual hilarity, his type of humor
seems forced.
This is made clear through much of Anchorman, as he’s grouped with actors
who are much better at playing broad characterizations. Steve Carrell is
especially delightful as the dumbest in the news team, his puzzlement over
the most childish of details coming across in the actor’s anything’s game
work ethic. The film’s elaborate set pieces, which are becoming a convention
in these lowbrow comedies, are hit-and-miss: an animated sequence falls as
flat as a pan flute performance, but a rumble between competing news shows,
including the NPR crew, is absurdly genius.
Ferrell has been hard at work as of late, trying to convince people of the
hilarity to be found if people would just watch Anchorman. Playing Ron
Burgundy for every news show -- many not noticing that his shtick is at
their expense -- he’s seemingly begun caricaturing his own caricature. The
finest incarnation of Ron Burgundy came with his pleasure over the New York
Post Kerry-Gephardt cover, pronouncing that this is real journalism. At his
best, he’s a reminder that Ron Burgundy might not be that far from the truth.
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