The Unseen Movie Review

Anchorman

Will Ferrell has been knocking around for a few years now, but remains practically unknown in the UK while being a relatively big name in the States. This is thanks to the phenomenon that is Saturday Night Live – the breeding ground of the likes of Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Mike Myers and Chris Rock. That one TV show has, in the 29 years it has been running, produced more A-list comedians than anywhere else ever. Securing a place as a regular on the show pretty much guarantees a high enough profile to get at least a few film roles, and Ferrell has been making the most of it.

After his last big outing, last year’s halfway decent festive comedy Elf, Ferrell may be a tad more familiar to UK audiences, but he has yet to prove himself in the transition from small to big screen. Until now, that is. After a series of minor films, and bit parts in bigger movies like Starsky and Hutch and Zoolander, Ferrell, who also co-scripted, has hit on a winner. This could easily do for him what Wayne’s World did for Mike Myers or 48 Hours for Eddie Murphy, and turn him from TV to movie star.

In this exaggerated 1970s period comedy Ferrell is the eponymous television news anchorman Ron Burgundy, a brash, misogynistic braggart who sees himself as the star of “an age when only men were allowed to read the news”. His self-confident sexism is swiftly challenged by the arrival of a sultry new female reporter, played by that other former US TV star Christina Applegate, as the new feminism of the seventies begins to impact on the high pressure world of the news.

It is a basic premise, and hardly an original one, but is Burgundy so wonderfully stupid and lecherous, and the set-pieces so well conceived, that it is very hard not to get caught up in the inanity of the plot and characters. Add in some cameos by Ferrell’s big name buddies Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Tim Robbins, and you have all the ingredients for a highly enjoyable, if utterly inconsequential comedy.

This is hardly biting social satire, but it has no wish to be. The aim is simple – make fun of male chauvinists and 1970s fashion disasters. The targets are easy ones, and all are pretty much hit dead on the bullseye. Every now and again, that’s all anyone wants from a movie. Nothing challenging, nothing too clever, just stupid laughs. It’s the Laurel and Hardy approach to film comedy – a bit of slapstick, a bit of wordplay, and a number of elaborate set-ups for a series of inevitable and often predictable (but no less funny for it) punchlines.

It is about time Ferrell made it to the big league, if only because he’s been trying so hard for so long. Whether he has what it takes to make the leap from moderate success to stardom along the lines of the Ben Stillers, Mike Myers and Adam Sandlers of this world has yet to be seen, but this is certainly a promising step along that path. If you fancy a couple of hours of giggling to yourself, Anchorman could well be the one for you.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 12:00 AM