“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” DreamWorks
Directed by Adam McKay
There’s really no middle ground. Either you love Will
Ferrell or you hate him, and that’s pretty much what’s
going to decide whether or not his latest film “Anchorman:
The Legend of Ron Burgundy” is for you or not. Ferrell, who
plays the titular chauvinistic, overconfident news anchor
extraordinaire of the 1970s is so over the top that you could
safely say he is at his most ridiculous ever in this film, and
that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The premise is simple
““ head local news anchor Burgundy rules San Diego with his
questionable charm and ’70s style polyester pantsuit fashion
until an ambitious and talented female reporter, Veronica
Corningstone (Christina Applegate) attempts to knock him from his
pedestal of evening news greatness. Ferrell and his newscaster
subordinates are forced to defend their status as local
“studs” by getting with the times, learning to
cooperate, and ultimately throwing that all away and just being
flat-out hilarious. Paul Rudd, who plays Brian Fantana, the suave
self-proclaimed “ladies’ man,” gives an
impressive performance, as does David Koechner as the
cowboy-turned-sports reporter Champ Kind. But funnier than these
two is Brick Tamland, played by Steven Carell, the mildly retarded
weather reporter who can barely keep up with the film’s
narrow and simplistic plot twists himself. Along with Burgundy, the
four make a group of newscasters who are wildly over the top, yet
still vaguely reminiscent of newscasters of the past. And while the
rest of the cast is pretty funny, it’s clear from the start
this is Ferrell’s movie, as he steals the film as the
multi-talented Burgundy. The chemistry between him and Applegate
isn’t the best, but that doesn’t make the film any less
entertaining. There’s really nothing funnier than watching a
husky Ferrell rock out on a jazz flute, while you no doubt compare
Burgundy’s skills to your own personal favorite jazz flutist.
But while Ferrell dominates, Applegate struggles to keep up. She
has shown a knack to be funny in past comedies (“The Sweetest
Thing,” “A View from the Top” and of course as
the classic TV bimbo Kelly Bundy in “Married … with
Children”), but her performance in “Anchorman”
falls flat, lacking that certain something that the rest of the
cast uses to put the audience in stitches. On her own she’s
never really that funny, and in the end is enveloped into the
comedic shadow that Ferrell’s dominating presence casts over
the entire film. But Applegate does have her moments, such as when
a petty newsroom fight between her and Ferrell escalates to a
full-out cat fight, ending as she body-slams Ferrell and hurls a
typewriter at his face. Still, just as Ferrell manages to steal
every other scene in the film, he gets the last laugh by using his
superior intellect to call Applegate a “smelly pirate
whore.” Obviously, “Anchorman” never takes itself
too seriously. There are no moralizing or phony attempts to make
the characters multidimensional, forcibly adding those cheap
“serious” moments that comedies sometimes try to pull.
Ferrell and the rest of his crew have one goal: to tell the people
of San Diego the news, and they let nothing get in the way. And
that’s reason enough to watch them. – Justin
Scott