"His news is bigger than your news." - tagline
This review, like most of my reviews, will not do the movie any justice.
There are movies that come along that will be watched again and again and again. They will not get old. We can recite nearly every line from them. These movies are legendary for some generations. This movie is called Anchorman. It was one in a slew of Will Ferrell films in which Ferrell had some kind of new weird job. None of the others really held a candle to Anchorman, though. And that's why it's worth talking about. This movie is hilarious in all of the best, in your face and screaming ways.
This is one of those comedies that is stupid in very genius ways, like Napoleon Dynamite or Austin Powers: Goldmember. The world of Anchorman is very clearly fictional, and all of the characters nearing a cartoon level. But that's what's awesome about it.
Set in the mid 1980s or '70s or '60s, I don't know, something retro, Anchorman is the story of San Diego news anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell). Burgundy, despite being an obnoxious douchebag (or rather in spite of being an obnoxious douchebag), is on top of the world. He is seen as something of an icon in his city, because apparently a news anchor is the only thing people in this city care about. Everything changes once Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) enters his world, secretly jonesing for an anchor job of her own. Ladies man Ron wants the professional Veronica bad, which could spell trouble for him down the road.
This is one where I really need to talk about the characters. First off, Will Ferrell uses his man child routine to great effect here. Ron Burgundy, while passing himself off as a suave, sophisticated badass, is really a childish, delusional, semi-retarded prima donna. To say Ferrell plays it to the bone is an understatement. It's actually kind of amazing. One minute Burgundy is living like a king and acting like one and the next he is a self loathing mass of nothing and acting like one. His news team consists of assholes as colorful as the A-Team. There's lifelong cool kid Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), the sexually confused party animal Champ Kind (David Koechner), and, most importantly, the mentally retarded and somewhat homicidal meteorologist Brick Tamland (Steve Carell). I think all Anchorman fans would not mind a spinoff featuring all three of these news team idiots, especially Brick and his tridant. There are many other fun celebrity cameos that make the movie even more ridiculous and hilarious. So yeah, the cast is great. You gotta love when everyone plays such a stupid situation as if it were so dire.
The movie's humor meshes absurdity with dark comedy very well. It's the type of comedy that's funny because it's stupid in kind of a genius way. That doesn't make sense, but that's how I describe it. Describing the comedy behind the movie will only come off as artificial and not as good. You just gotta watch it.
What carries the movie more than anything are the cartoonishly ridiculous characters that inhabit it. Ron Burgundy himself is the juice though. The legend built around him in the film sort of bleeds over to the audience. Because by the end of it, he is a legendary character. Of course he's a pretty poor excuse for a human being. He's the freaking anchorman and it's made pretty clear in the movie that he has no idea what he's reading on the teleprompter, but he can read it well. Along with Will Ferrel's famed man child routine, Ron has plenty of other quirks. He is suave and confident but ignorantly insensitive, he claims to be well read but can't pronounce 'jogging', he is a smooth ladies man but is a totally obnoxious simpleton, and he has some sort of weird symbiotic attachment to his dog, Baxter.
The writing by Adam McKay and Ferrel is so stupefyingly goofy. With the performances elevating a script to a level of comic gold, Anchorman is a solid movie. From an all news man street fight to a struggle for life in the bear pit, the movie is comedic gold. Watch it.
This has been a classic review from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading. And your welcome, Pugsley.
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