WhatzUp

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy
by Derek Neff

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy is outrageous, pointless and highly immature. It’s also incredibly funny, with gags piled in such quick sequence on top of each other that on a handful of occasions I literally didn’t have enough air left in my lungs to properly laugh anymore. My affection for the movie is indefensible - on paper, Anchorman just shouldn’t work at all - but I still laugh out loud whenever I think of certain lines of dialogue from the movie, the way my friends and I once did with a

handful of Bill Murray films from the 80s (Stripes, Meatballs, Caddyshack, et al).

Will Ferrell plays the titular Ron Burgandy, a deep-voiced dunce who anchors the local San Diego TV news (circa 1975). His news team includes Champ Kind (played by obscure but very funny SNL alum David Koechner), who does the sports; Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), whose hard-hitting investigative stories are relegated almost exclusively to a panda being born at the local zoo; and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), who does the weather, and who has all the intelligence of a gnat. The team is thrown into an uproar when the news manager (Fred Willard) hires a woman to join their staff. Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) is every bit as ambitious as Burgandy, and the two quickly find themselves vying for the same seat, despite the fact that they fall in love with each other.

But this is all just a generic synopsis of the movie’s thin plot and doesn’t even begin to convey how funny it is. That’s because much of it is in the delivery. I realize that there some people who find Will Ferrell about as appealing as an unbuttered piece of toast,

but I for one am completely susceptible to his brand of goofy go-for-broke humor, and Anchorman is the first movie that fully showcases Ferrell’s idiosyncratic style. (He co-wrote the screenplay with Adam McKay, who also directed.)

As funny as Ferrell is, I for one found almost everything that Carell says in his role as Brick Tamland to be absolutely hilarious. (Would you believe I’m laughing right now, just thinking of him?) It’s a classic role, and Carell hits every joke with just the right amount of punch. I’m tempted to give you an example of what I mean, but I’d get it wrong. Besides, I don’t want to spoil it, just like I don’t want to spoil the surprise by giving you a list of the great

cameo appearances that pop up throughout the movie. (I can’t resist revealing, however, that my dream of seeing Will Ferrell and Jack Black together in the same scene has now come true.) You might hate Anchorman: like I said, it’s a pretty pointless story, and I can’t really defend it on rational grounds. I’ll probably never go out of my way to watch it again, but if I stumble upon it on cable while flipping through the channels late at night some Friday, I betcha I won’t be able to resist watching.