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Ferrell Flops with Anchorman
"The movie is poorly written and poorly acted, and turns theatergoing into a torturous exercise in bad Hollywood filmmaking."
By Jake Schneider
Usually when you go see a movie, you expect that no matter how bad the script, how repulsive the performances, or how stupid the characters, the experience of going to a movie theater will ultimately be enjoyable.
Unfortunately, there is no such redemption for Anchorman, Will Ferrell’s new attempt at lowbrow comedy. The movie is poorly written and poorly acted, and turns theatergoing into a torturous exercise in bad Hollywood filmmaking.
The premise of the movie is simple: evening news anchor Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) owns San Diego’s airwaves and he knows it. His Channel 4 News Team is always first in the ratings, and there isn’t a woman in San Diego who would turn down a pass from him. But when saucy new reporter Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) arrives on the scene with aspirations of anchoring the news herself, Burgundy’s world gets a little more complicated. The ensuing drama consists of bad jokes and the type of slapstick humor that one would expect. It also comes with unattractive performances and unentertaining plotlines—not exactly a recipe for success.
Anchorman does have its moments, notably its clever depiction of competition inside the soulless world of TV news. But overall, the movie’s desperate attempts at cheap humor and clichéd shtick should strike any viewer as pathetic. It doesn’t help that within the first couple of scenes, Burgundy manages to offend nearly everyone in the audience: African Americans, gays, the mentally disabled, and women. They’re all fair game for Burgundy’s crude humor. Not only are many of the jokes offensive, they’re not even remotely funny or entertaining.
Take Burgundy’s treatment of women. He can’t go two minutes without hitting on someone, often by using misogynistic toilet humor to do it. The act is funny the first couple times, but by the third scene, the jokes are just grating. Rather than endear the brazen character to you, they merely make you want to cringe every time he opens his mouth. Either the scriptwriters never graduated from kindergarten or they’ve spent too much time watching the WWE lately. The jokes are lame and very quickly become painful to watch.
The most disappointing aspect of Anchorman is the fact that it was written by former Saturday Night Live writers and talented humorists Ferrell and Adam McKay. The movie leaves you wondering why they couldn’t just stick with the intelligent and entertaining humor that has made SNL a hit for the last twenty-nine years.
Anchorman’s attempt to manufacture laughs with some of the world’s least entertaining characters and worst jokes falls completely flat. In the process, the bad in the movie manages to outweigh the popcorn, the big screen, and everything else you look forward to when you head to the theater.
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