A waste of Will Ferrell's talent. A waste of time & money to see it.

Rating: 3/10 (13 February 2005)

Will Ferrell can be a very funny guy. Although there a few laugh-out-loud moments in this film, mostly it is just plain stupid - written by someone with little understanding of the early 1970s or the situation he attempts to portray.
Mostly "Anchorman" is a poorly written movie. The film's writer was born in 1968 and apparently did little research on the subject. After all, that would make him only about 5 years old at the time he is attempting to re-create. That would be okay if he had substituted research for experience. However, in an interview on the DVD, the writer alludes to the movie's premise being based on the late TV newswoman Jessica Savitch coming to anchor in Philadelphia and the way the male news team went nuts over it. She had already been a success in Texas and was generally well accepted at KYW in Philadelphia. In fact, by the early 1970s, women in TV were more than a novelty. In Philadelphia, where the writer was born, two women - Marciarose and Trudy Haynes - were already well established at that same station for several years by the time Savitch got there - and Haynes was black.
What's more, women on network TV news had already become fairly commonplace - including Pauline Fredericks, Nancy Dickerson, and Barbara Walters - among many others.
However, all that being said - the idea that a particularly dumb male news team may possibly feel threatened by a new female on-air personality might have some comedic potential. The fact is that it doesn't do it here.
There is also a senseless violent fight scene that tries to be funny - it's not funny - and neither is most of this very stupid movie.