Originally published 7/16/04
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy
Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay
Producer: Judd Apatow
Stars: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steven Carrell, David Koechner, Fred Willard
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy is like the cinematic equivalent of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain. It’s a successful satire because every audience member is going to think it’s about their local news anchor, and every local news anchor is going to fear it’s about them. But I know better. It must be about Paul Moyer. It must.
The inhuman tones of the local newsreader – the condescending faux-gravitas, the nightly emotional whip-sawing from murder to consumer products that may kill you to the cute puppy story, and the calculated banter and homeliness – these are ripe comedy targets that have been scored on for years. Anchorman does them one better, though, by asking us to embrace one of these self-important blowhards, and root for him to win.
There is something unavoidably endearing about someone who doesn’t intend to be a shallow cad, but must work with the half-empty mental toolbox he was given. Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell), 5-time Emmy winning anchor for a San Diego evening news broadcast, lacks even the depth to examine what’s placed on his teleprompter – watch as his usual sign-off, “you stay classy, San Diego!”, is replaced by something considerably more rude, and he doesn’t even realize it until someone shows him the tape.
But still, despite how successfully the movie (which Ferrell co-wrote) betrays his work as lacking a certain purpose, we can tell how much it means to him, and enjoy seeing him behind his desk enough to accept him as our hero. Burgandy is one of those fully-formed comic alter egos that are occupied perfectly by their creator – as good as Austin Powers or Pee-Wee Herman. You get the feeling Ferrell could make you laugh as Burgandy well beyond just one movie – and the fact that many of the funniest gags in the promotional trailers don’t even show up in the movie suggests that there was, rarely for a Hollywood comedy, too much good material to choose from.
No less inspired as comic creations are his news team. There’s weatherman Brick Tamlan (Steven Carrell), who confesses to having an IQ of 48 but is well-liked because he’s cheerful even when he’s putting mayonnaise in the toaster. Field reporter Brian Fannell (Paul Rudd) carries a revolver and tries to pick up women using his ultra-powerful Black Panther cologne, which is “made from bits of real panther, so you know it’s good!” And then there’s cowboy hat-wearing sports guy Champ Kind (David Koechner), who interjects his catchphrase (“Whammy!”) in the strangest places, and whose love for boss Burgandy is so strong it comes close to daring not speak its name.
Their world of manly banter and ferocious rivalries with the other news teams in town – particularly that of Burgandy’s arch-nemesis Wes Mantooth (Vince Vaughn) – is invaded by the unthinkable: a woman (Christina Applegate) who wants to be a news anchor.
Veronica Corningstone has intelligence, poise, and solid journalistic instincts. Christina Applegate, playing Veronica, has a heroic ability to keep a straight face while hearing Ron Burgandy pick-up lines like “You have an absolutely breath-taking… heiney. I mean, that thing’s good. I wanna be friends with it.” This makes her an enormous threat to the world of Ron Burgandy, and yet he can’t help but be smitten with her. And though he is given to non-sequiter exclamations like “By Zues’ Beard!” and claiming that San Diego is derived from a German term for a whale’s vagina, she is soon just as much in love. But when an accident puts her in the anchor’s chair, and she proves herself worthy, it’s nothing less than a declaration of war.
At some point, while we weren’t looking, a loose comedy troupe formed. Ferrell doesn’t have enough to contend with from his scene-stealing co-stars – Carrell in particular can score laughs before he even talks with his dim-bulb facial expressions, then bigger laughs when he talks. But he also brings on a parade of cameos by co-stars from his movies of the last 3-4 years. Most of them appear in a bench-clearing, ultra-violent free-for-all that erupts in an alley between all of San Diego’s news teams – including the Spanish-language channel, whose leader cracks a bullwhip and is played by someone who is decidedly not Hispanic, but still very very funny.
Scenes like this brawl (which manages to briefly reference, of all things, Planet of the Apes) and a musical number where Burgandy shows off his prowess with the jazz flute, seem utterly apropos of nothing. They’re not skewering news anchors, after all, and have nothing to do with the plot. But for some reason, they still feel like they belong.
More than the story, more even than the character of Ron Burgandy, we’re experiencing 90 minutes of pure Will Ferrell, and that we still laugh shows that Anchorman is probably the most successfully pure, direct expression of one comedian’s oddball world view since The Jerk.
It takes divinely-inspired madness to plot a riff on A Star is Born in the world of 70’s local news, add an animated fantasy sequence and a spontaneous a capella performance of Afternoon Delight, and arrive at a climax that features a subtitled conversation between a dog and a bear. And it takes a comedian at the top of his game to make the whole thing hang together. There are loose threads, gags that fall flat, and moments that will defy you to understand their purpose, but Ferrell’s comic voice keeps it all together and moving, which is why I laugh – even at the jazz flute.