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Anchorman
Will Ferrell is one of those comedic actors that, to me, has just been waiting to explode on the scene. He's been good in other films but he just hasn't had that break out hit that really establishes him as the major comedic force that he could be. Honestly I don't know if Anchorman is that vehicle. Yes to me it is funny as hell, but can the mainstream public embrace something so surreal? Movies and movie fans have become so bland over the past few years that I don't know if something truly surreal can survive against other "so-called" comedies like White Chicks.
Will Farrell plays Ron Burgundy, an egotistical local television news anchor who is loved by the public and has won numerous Emmys. He and his news team are rated number one and they rule local television news. They are chauvinistic, they are arrogant, and they are weird.
Enter Veronica Corningstone played by Christina Applegate, a talented female journalist brought in to better diversify the appearance of the news team. A story being followed by the station is supposed to be closely watched by network television and the anchor heading the story has a shot at a network position. Burgundy feels that he is a shoe in, but Corningstone is talented and ambitious. Also the two fall in love with each other. Eventually though, Burgundy and his pals begin to feel threatened by her, so they do everything they can to destroy her.
There's not a lot of story to this film, but that's ok. No movie has made me laugh this much in years. Like Blazing Saddles, Vacation and other classic comedies Anchorman is more about character and surreal events than about deep story telling. As far as being surreal Anchorman exists on a whole different level than the aforementioned films. There are sequences in this film that I didn't believe could be real. These sequences made me laugh so hard I thought my head would explode!
Writing this review is a struggle because it's hard to talk about how funny the movie is without giving away some of those great sequences. This movie doesn't just border on absurd, it revels in it. The humor runs the gambit from satirical, to intelligent, to straight up potty humor. There's something for everybody!
Ferrell made some excellent decisions with this film, first to not reserve all the laughs for himself, and second, to distribute the laughs to a great cast to back him up. Steven Carrell plays an almost mentally retarded weatherman named appropriately enough "Brick" (as dumb as...) Tamland. He's never really a part of the plot, he's sort of always in his own world, spouting some of the most outlandish and hilarious comments from left field to be found in the movie. There's one sequence where is he is put up by his companions to play a joke on Veronica who has to actually explain the joke to Brick in the process. Speaking of Christina Applegate, her comic timing and delivery is right on par with that of Carrell, Ferrell and the rest. We can laugh at the jokes the newsmen try to pull on her because she is just as tough, if not tougher than they are and she gives it back to them in spades. Other great character actors in the film, and all equally funny, are Paul Rudd, David Koechner, and Fred Willard.
At times Anchorman can feel like a series of skits strung together by a thin thread of a plot but as I said it doesn't matter because the humor, and the all out bizarre nature of these set pieces sucked me in. One comment though, for such a unique movie that takes so many chances throughout, the ending is fairly bland and Hollywood. They could have done better with the ending. These are small quibbles but they do manage to detract from the film a bit.
I laughed from the opening credits until the lights went up in the theater, until I made it to my car, and in fact if I think too much about the movie I could start laughing right now.
8/10
-Stephen Lackey |
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Anchorman
Review: 8/10
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