Friday, July 09, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

MOVIE REVIEW: "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy"

Dropping Anchor: `Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy' manages to let down Will Ferrell's lead character

San Diego's top-rated TV news team: Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), from left, Champ Kind (David Koechner), "Anchorman" Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), newcomer Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell).

You go to a movie like "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" hoping for good, dumb fun.

Well, one out of three ain't bad.

But that doesn't exactly make "Anchorman" good, either.

The movie takes a subject rife with satiric potential -- the quaint pre-cable, pre-satellite world of local TV news in the '70s -- and reduces it to a series of scattershot skits that aim undeniably low.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But stretching that comic philosophy to feature length requires a bit more comic energy and -- dare we say it? -- smarts than "Anchorman" can muster.

Those who routinely laugh themselves sick at star (and co-writer) Will Ferrell's fearless, tireless comedic shtick won't care about any of that, of course.

Not when their hero has a tailor-made showcase for his patented brand of brainless, pompous bluster.

Indeed, Ron Burgundy would have made an ideal focus for a recurring "Saturday Night Live" skit about a dunderhead local anchor with exactly one talent: reading anything (and we do mean anything) off a TelePrompTer with steely authority and earthquake-proof conviction, despite the fact that none of it ever penetrates what passes for his brain.

Even so, he's the king of San Diego TV news, complete with court jesters: street reporter and self-styled babe magnet Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd); good ol' boy sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner), who's curiously possessive of his fearless leader's attentions; and weather guy Brick Tamland ("The Daily Show's" Steve Carell), who's about as thick as his first name would indicate.

But a new arrival at the station interrupts their cozy routine of news, booze and cruising for foxes. She's reporter Veronica Corningstone (brisk, perky Christina Applegate), who's determined to crash through the glass ceiling and challenge the newsroom chauvinists at their own game.

Yes, it's a real live variation on that time-tested theme: the battle of the sexes.

But Farrell and co-writer Adam McKay, a former "Saturday Night Live" writer making his directorial debut, can't quite decide whether to develop the plot or ignore it in favor of zanier, more self-contained comic bits.

So they do both, saddling "Anchorman" with a definite case of split-personality syndrome.

As the movie lurches from one plot point to the next, you can feel "Anchorman" chomping at the bit, anxious to let loose with some honest-to-goodness mayhem.

And every time things do break free, "Anchorman" benefits from a temporary comedic charge. (These zippy highlights range from an impromptu, a cappella rendition of "Afternoon Delight" to a cameo-punctuated rumble with rival TV news teams that spoofs Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" in hilarious, nose-thumbing style.)

Yet those intervals, welcome as they are, smack almost as much of desperation as they do distraction.

The same goes for many of the performances, which range from the curiously passive (the usually uproarious Fred Willard as a beleaguered news director) to borderline rabid (Koechner). At least Rudd and Carell manage to create sure-fire attitudes to match their giggle-worthy '70s attire: obnoxiously oversexed in Rudd's case, gear-grindingly dense in Carell's. And real-life ex-anchor Bill Kurtis (a Chicago mainstay before becoming a network and cable news fixture) provides deadpan, suitably stentorian narration throughout.

As befits a movie subtitled "The Legend of Ron Burgundy," however, this "Anchorman" belongs to its anchor, Ferrell.

Beyond showcasing his gifts for gung-ho physical clowning, "Anchorman" also gives Ferrell ample opportunity to exercise his diarrhea-of-the-jawbone verbal style as Burgundy punctuates his pronouncements with such unctuous utterances as "By the beard of Zeus!" and "Oh, great Odin's raven!" (What, "Great Caesar's ghost" isn't good enough?) Add a penchant for impromptu jazz flute playing, a tendency to dissolve into primal-scream hysterics at moments of emotional stress and an impressive ability to overrate his own star status and Ron Burgundy emerges as a character who deserves a movie all his own.

Just not this one.