"I love... carpet. I love... desk. I love... lamp."

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2007)

A consistently funny movie whose humour is very similar to that of Seth McFarlane's "Family Guy", minus the flashbacks and never-ending chicken fights. The basics are still more or less the same: thin, largely inconsequential plot line, one-dimensional characters, non-sequiturs, gay jokes, and half-baked social satire. Steve Carell dominates every scene he's in as the slightly challenged reporter Brick. Though the plot, as I said, is impossible to care very much about, the film never bores thanks to an endless onslaught of dumb jokes and a great cast. Ferrell, Koechner, Carell and the incomparable Paul Rudd are perfect as a quartet of misogynist, homophobic news reporters whose lives are turned up-side-down when an ambitious woman (gasp!), played by Christina Applegate, starts working at their office.
Some might say that the social satire doesn't work, but I think that in a time when page after page in newspapers are devoted to the likes of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, the notion that a pregnant panda becomes a huge national event doesn't seem so absurd. Overall very entertaining in a "I think I just got substantially dumber" kind of way. If the steady stream of gags don't do it for you, there's always the virtual marathon of cameos to enjoy: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Luke Wilson, Tim Robbins, Danny Trejo, Vince Vaughn, Fred Willard, Missi Pyle, Seth Rogen, the list goes on. 60% of the time, you'll like this movie 100% of the time.