No Pretensions; Just A Lot Of Laughs

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2008)

In many ways I think the best comparison for this movie is probably "Gilligan's Island" - and I mean that in a positive way. What I loved about 1960's comedies such as Gilligan's Island (or Hogan's Heroes or The Beverley Hillbillies) is that they had no pretension about them. They didn't claim to be making any fundamentally important social statement. They were all just about being silly enough to have fun with - and, to me at least - they worked. And that's what "Anchorman" is - it's silly enough (stupid enough to be honest) to be able to simply sit down and have fun with. There's nothing serious about this; no important subplots; no significant life lessons. It's just good old fun, and it works wonderfully.
Will Ferrell as the legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy and Christina Applegate as his romantic interest and anchor rival Veronica Corningstone play this perfectly. Their straight up serious performances are exactly what the movie needs to make it really funny. I actually thought that they worked so well together that it would be interesting to see what sort of chemistry they might have in a more serious romantic comedy. Also brilliantly funny were Ron's news team, played by Paul Rudd (as Brian Fantana), Steve Carell (as Brick Tamland) and David Koechner (as Champ Kind). These three - and especially Koechner - were hilarious in their roles.
There were a couple of problems here, mind you. At times - even for this sort of movie - it went a bit over the top. I remember especially the news team rumble. It was a cute idea, but didn't add a lot to the story and added too many other rival news teams. Where the movie had to that point featured a rivalry between only two news teams (Ron's and Wes Mantooth's, played by Vince Vaughn), all of a sudden we have a third network, public television and Spanish language TV in the picture. Too much - way too much. I also though that there just wasn't enough story here to go much past an hour and a half, but this one went over 1:45. Again, too much - way too much. After a while the jokes started to get a bit old. Probably there was enough to go 1:20 to 1:25 with this.
Basically, though, there were a lot of laughs here (and I loved the closing dialogue between Baxter the dog and the kodiak bear - "fare thee well, Baxter. You shall always be the friend of the bears.") If you just want to have some fun without having to think too hard - and we all need that sometimes - this is a great one to watch. 8/10