Britt's On

Anchorman
Starring: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate
Costarring: Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd, Fred Willard
Times Watched: 4-5
Genre: Comedy / Dude Comedy
Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic: 66% / 63

Road To Ownership: I'm pretty sure this movie made its way into my collection via my boyfriend.


The Plot: It's the 1970s and Ron Burgandy is the top rated evening news anchor in San Diego. However, his supersize ego appears to meet its match when an ambitious female reporter named Veronica Corningstone joins the team. The twosome quickly fall for one another, leading to a kinder, gentler, Ron, but all of that falls apart when a chance encounter gives Veronica the big break she needs - resulting in her promotion to co-anchor with Ron, and demotion to ex-girlfriend of Ron's. Sabotage and rage are the name of the game after that basically.



The Good & The Bad: Well, this is basically a Will Ferrell for you. A quintessential one in fact. The movie is centered around a egocentric character, with everyone else essentially there as set pieces for gags. The plot is generally pretty spastic, consisting mostly of sketches and random dude moments, while the ending is laughably bad. Basically it's like Ferrell and his crew sat in a room and thought, what is the most retarded story we could possibly come up with and still convince people to not only buy tickets for it, but watch it again and again (for the record, I've only seen this movie as often as I have because of watching it with other people).

That being said, Ron Burgandy is one of Ferrell's more memorable, and marginally more successful characters, partially because it's one of his first big starring roles. Many of his other characters - such as in Semi-Pro and Talladega Nights - are basically riffs on the same thing: let's take an amusing job, cast an egocentric dolthead, and cobble together a ridiculous story (note: although Old School follows the same 'sketch' format, Ferrell is not the star, therefore it's also acceptable). Much like the first 'Pie' film, the replication of this formula wears thin after awhile, and even then stretches of this movie pass where you know they've thought they're doing something funny, but they aren't.


Best Scene: Although it's TOTALLY ridiculous and inserted just for a random bunch of cameos, the alleyway news team gang fight is my favourite part. Mostly because seeing Ben Stiller as a laughably bad 'Spanish Language News beetches!' anchor is amazing.

Worst Scene: The ending is pretty damn terrible. Like, really terrible. And the animated 'unicorn ride' is pretty ghey as well.

Best Character: By default I'd have to go with Will Ferrell. While some of the minor scene stealers in other Ferrell films take the cake, this movie is all Ron, all the time. Honorable mention goes to Christina Applegate for managing to inject rigid Veronica with some laughable humor and girl power empathy.

Worst Character: I don't find David Koechner funny, ever. Not on The Office, not in this movie, not in any movie. The fact he makes me laugh 0.0 times in this movie earns him the low honour of being the worst character.

Soundtrack of our Lives: some classic 70s tunes are spun throughout, but the Semi-Pro soundtrack is about 10000000x better.

If You Like This You'll Like: Basically any Ferrell movie - Old School, Elf, Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Talladega Nights, etc.

RATING: 2.5/5