Loud, obnoxious and woefully misjudged – newsflash: it's horrid.

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2009)

A collective sigh ought to sound up amongst the audience once the end titles for the horror-show that-is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy begin to scroll, a collective sigh of relief that the pain is over and the fact that the characters we just spent the runtime of the film with are going onto the sorts of things that none of it's target audience will ever see or experience - and all that by way of acting in the manners they do throughout. The film is a misfire of monumental proportions, a horribly misjudged; badly executed piece whose very existence, whose very presence, on the screen just feels like a continuous two-fingers up gesture at the watching audience. What plays out under a very colourful; very false (in more ways than one) setting full of daft, glossy 1970s clichés and pastiches is a series of un-likable people doing leery, stupid and downright cruel things to one another; all under this painfully upbeat and colourful umbrella of the 'spoof' variety. In a word, it is shocking and I am stunned at the overwhelmingly positive reaction it has received.
The film, whose overly long title does not deserve to be re-typed, is quite clearly supposed to be some sort of stupid spoof of egotistical driven, male dominated work places from yester-decade and the beginnings of the rise of female co-workers in this area. The film covers what Claire Monk wrote about in the late 1990s in regards to men in crisis and the rise in feminism, and that these sorts of things were being explored in British cinema of that time under the banner of comedy. But where Brassed Off and The Full Monty were more restrained in their humour and attitudes towards women and the respective desperate situations the guys were in, Anchorman ploughs on ahead without a destination in its brain and without a brain in its head; tearing up the road forever in search of pathetic, frat-boy inspired laughs.
Will Ferrell plays the the titular role of Ron Burgundy, an anchor man at a California based TV network. He's the lead guy at a local news station and head of a crew of others that include sports reporters and weather guys. No distinction is made as to why he's the best in the business and as to why he's such the proclaimed genius everyone thinks he is, I guess he is purely out the fact he happens to be the one that introduces and concludes each broadcast. The man wears a sickly grin and kisses his biceps in what is an ego-driven and very masculine act that signifies power in the workplace, by way of muscular iconography. He dresses in loud suits and sweet-talks his way into and out of many-a situation, usually involving attractive women of some sort. Despite this titular-proclaimed legendary status, the man is severely and frighteningly mentally disturbed. I think the above cliché-ridden masculine archetype is introduced fairly well, but the film really wants us to buy into this character as he stands when the whole thing should be of the spoof variety. Rather than introduce and proclaim "look how much of an idiot this guy is and how stupid his attitudes are", I think we're supposed to follow an ideation along the lines of: "look how fantastic this guy is, and look at how he got to where he is by way of treating others".
What is supposed to be the direct conflict of the piece's characters arrives in the form of Christina Applegate's Veronica Corningstone, a female employed by the station after rising demands for female employees, and an instance of Monk's theory revolving around the rise of women in male dominated work places rearing its head. For about thirty to forty minutes the film does something with this idea, then it has its two leads sleep with one another before veering off into a dumb passage of play revolving around the two hating each other and working out new ways to demonstrate this hating. For what should be the best part, the film introduces a pig of a male character; has him seduce a strong and up-coming female character attempting to get a foothold as feminism arises with her; consequently bring her back down to Earth before branching out into a narrative that is about one rung above that of an episode of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
Burgundy is a living legend; he's both every male's idol and fantasy and sits atop both the TV ratings and his career path along with his crew. Yet the man is unaware of what 'San Diego' translates into out of the Spanish language; the man abuses his power rather than come to respect it when he attempts to pull women at a party at someone's pool house and on occasion, his dog talks to him, further pushing the film out into a scary realm it shouldn't really be treading anywhere near – maybe we ought to re-title the film 'The Legend of David Richard Berkowitz'. There's a really uneven sense of sexual predatory goings-on in Anchorman, and the realisation that it's the horrid and somewhat evil piece that it is settles in by way of an ominous and creepy fashion. The film's runtime is false; it needs dumb extra tidbits to bulk it out: a horribly misjudged scene in which a dog is supposedly killed is one of them, and a monumentally tired Sergio Leone pastiche had me with my head in my hands. Everything in the film bottoms out; from weatherman Brick's (Carell) role as the constant source of ridicule due to his own special needs, to the fact the film thinks constant shouting acts as something 'funny' on screen. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is trash of most misjudged, misguided order.