Mini review: Anchorman
- Wade
Thanks to Netflix, I think I've seen more movies in the past six weeks than I've seen in the past six years. I've become a big fan-- their business model is genius, and I hope they're making enough money to stay afloat for a while, given that we've got 94 movies in our queue.
We received Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy in the latest shipment, and I eagerly popped it into the DVD player last week expecting great things. As documented previously, I think Will Ferrell is perhaps the funniest man on the planet. I've got both of his "SNL: Best of" discs and can't watch them without turning into a giggling little schoolgirl. He's quite scrumschulescent.
Needless to say, my expectations were quite high. If you saw the buildup in the previous paragraph, you can probably guess that my next sentence will be that expectations were, in fact, not met. Bingo.
That's not to say I still didn't become a tittering girl scout. Ferrell's lines about scotch, speaking Spanish, and San Diego being German for "whale's vagina" repeatedly had me spitting Crystal Light out of my nose. And the supporting cast was pretty stellar, including cameos from Luke Wilson, Neil Flynn, Jack Black, Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and Tim Robbins. One co-star I was looking forward to was Steve Carell, thinking that the Daily Show correspondent would make the transition to film nicely-- however since his character was basically retarded, we didn't get to see much.
The basic reason I didn't like the movie was, well, it wasn't very high on plot. You had your basic love story, the fall and rise of the protagonist, and the standard scene where the star walks around the office with a giant erection. That old saw. But the film as a whole just doesn't come together among all of the funny one-liners. Maybe I'm asking too much from an SNL alum-type movie, but I don't remember feeling this way about Elf or Old School.
Could it be that this movie was also written by Ferrell? Maybe full-length features aren't his bag-- especially since the other filmwriting "credit" is A Night at the Roxbury. Anyway, if you're a Ferrell fan, this movie is worth watching. If you're not, save your Netflix queue slot for something else.
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