Hello, did somebody order a plot?

Rating: 5/10 (16 July 2004)

Hello, did somebody order a plot? If so, it never arrived.
I wanted to love "Anchorman" and I think Will Ferrell is usually hilarious, but this film just didn't work for me. While there were some very funny parts that had me laughing out loud, there seemed to be nothing coherent holding this film together. It just seemed to me like a bunch of skits loosely placed around an idea for a plot, rather than a full fleshed-out film.
Also, it too often went into lunacy instead of a straight-ahead story. I would have liked the story more if it were just about Ron Burgundy, obnoxious news anchor. But instead, we had total lapses of rational thought, for example, with the "rumble" between the various news teams or Burgundy's flute performance. It was things like that which took me out of the moment -- of 1970's San Diego -- and the movie lost all semblence of reality.
When it stuck to the more basic plot (old-school men vs. women's lib movement), the film felt more coherent and way funnier -- but the asides overwhelmed the plot...