Anchors Awry
New Will Ferrell Film Funny…Not Hilarious

That seemingly bottomless inspirational source for modern comedies, the seventies, is at it once again as actor Will Ferrell dons sideburns and cheesy mustache to star in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. The film is the latest in a string of successful comedies for the former Saturday Night Live actor--albeit one that will not necessarily have the shelf life of his previous outings Elf and Old School.

Newsin’ for a bruising. Channel 4 News Team Paul Rudd, Will Ferrell, David Koechner and Steve Carell get ready to rumble in Anchorman.

Anchorman takes us back to a time when men--mainly manly white men--ruled the television airwaves. Women were starting to knock through some of the panes in the glass ceiling, but it took many of the Geraldos of the era a little longer than others to recognize that their boy’s club had been infiltrated. Anchorman is about San Diego’s leading news anchor, Ron Burgundy, and his crew of misogynistic miscreants (David Koechner, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd) as they cope with the introduction of their station’s first female on-air journalist, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate).

The guys are appalled that their time in the spotlight is being threatened while at the same time they try to woo this liberated lady with misguided machismo. Ron and Veronica end up falling in love while competing for airtime at the station.

Anchorman suffers from the same dilemma as a previous Ferrell comedy, Old School. In both movies, the filmmakers appear undecided on whether to make Ferrell’s character a lovable buffoon or a nasty jerk. They seem to know that the jerk persona is much funnier but it is hard to sustain a love interest in the movie and get the audience to pull for the character if he maintains that level of nastiness. So they waver, alternately making Burgundy an object of our distain and a source for our sympathy.

The bulk of Anchorman centers on the relationship between Ron and Veronica and it is when they don’t get along that the sparks really fly. One of the funniest scenes is of the pair as reluctant co-anchors hurling insults at each other after the microphones have been turned off. The romantic moments between the two are painfully un-funny and unromantic.

As if to show the audience how funny Anchorman could have been, the filmmakers put one of the funniest scenes in recent memory right in the middle of the movie. Burgundy and his trusty news team are confronted in a deserted parking lot by the number two news team in San Diego led by anchorman Wes Mantooth (Vince Vaughn). As the two teams square off for a rumble the number three news team enters the fray, then the public broadcasting news squad and finally the Spanish language TV crew. The scene is rife with hilarious cameos and the sight of a pipe-smoking Tim Robbins with a turtleneck sweater and an Art Garfunkel hairdo as the violent leader of the PBS gang is worth the price of admission.

Generally speaking, Anchorman could’ve done with more scenes where Ferrell didn’t have to do all of the heavy lifting. The supporting cast is strong but is not given enough opportunity to shine. Koechner’s character, sportscaster Champ Kind, is a perfect springboard for comedy yet the filmmakers don’t include a single scene where he is actually doing anything sports-related (how hard would it have been to set up an interview gone wrong with a 70s sports figure?). And every great scene that Vince Vaughn is in makes you wonder why the news-team rivalry aspect of the movie wasn’t played up more.

Holding the movie’s emotional and comedic core in place is the wonderful Applegate. Without her perfect touch, both the love story aspect of the movie and its underlying theme of the dawning of women’s equality in the news game would fall apart. She is equally at home playing the straight woman or going for her own laughs. Here’s hoping she continues to find roles in comedies. Female lead roles in comedies of this sort are as rare as, well, women news anchors in the seventies.

The final theatrical edit of Anchorman runs about 90 minutes and is missing deleted scenes of a big news story about a radical underground group called The Alarm Clock. The group included actors Chuck D, Kevin Corrigan, Tara Subkoff and Maya Rudolph, all of whom could have provided a chuckle or two to the proceedings. Hopefully the deleted scenes will be available when the movie is released on DVD.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is rated PG-13 for Sexual Humor, Language and Comic Violence and is currently playing at Regal Cinema in Boone.