Comic Gold

Rating: 10/10 (24 November 2005)

I should say up front that I have never been a big fan of Will Ferrell. A little bit of him goes a long way. Elf was cute, but not that funny, and so I wasn't really looking forward to seeing this movie. Thank God I had a free HBO preview and some free time and decided to check out the unrated version of Anchorman on On Demand. This flick combines the inspired lunacy of Monty Python with the joke-a-minute absurdity of Airplane and comes out a big winner.
First, Steve Carell is a genius with his line delivery and timing. Every time he was on screen he was hilarious (I love lamp, I love LAMP!). I'm still laughing at his intro where he cheerfully announces he is what some refer to as mentally retarded. Brilliant! Paul Rudd is well cast as Brian Fantana, a Mark Spitzian type who's good with the ladies, especially when wearing Sex Panther (it has bits of real panther in it, so it must be good). Hysterical. All the other cast members acquit themselves well, especially the under-appreciated Christina Applegate who can react beautifully to the insanity transpiring around her and gets her hilarious revenge on Ron by changing his sign-off from "Stay classy" to "Go F*** yourself San Diego!". I had to replay that scene several times because I kept laughing so hard that I missed what came after.
Will Ferrell has changed my opinion of him with this masterpiece of humor, both as actor and writer. As soon as I had finished watching the film a third time, I immediately ordered the special 2 disc version (unrated of course).