Will Ferrell's comic blockbuster "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" was a huge success, but its sketch-style comedy won't suit everyone.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has got to be one of the most quoted films of recent times. The film stars Will Ferrell as the eponymous Anchorman, the highest rated newscaster in 1970s San Diego, whose crown is questioned by the arrival of the ambitious Veronica Corningstone (played by Christina Applegate.) Steve Carell is hilarious as the malaprop-prone weatherman and Paul Rudd provides solid backup when Ferrell needs it.
Everybody loves lamp
The most noticeable thing about Anchorman is the sheer number of quotations from it that have become popular. Wandering onto almost any university campus in Britain, you would soon bump into people who would understand an offer of “two tickets to the gun-show”, nod sagely at an insistence that “my apartment smells of rich mahogany” and remain unphazed by a confession that “I just killed a guy with a trident.”
And of course they would echo the declaration “I love lamp.” Everyone seems to love lamp these days. There are groups on the internet you can join if you truly love lamp. There are even t-shirts you can buy to advertise your emotional commitment to lamp.
Have we lost the plot?
The problem with Anchorman, however, is that it doesn’t really do any more than deliver a lot of amusing and quotable lines. The plot seems to consist of a loosely-linked series of sketches: funny thought they are, the hand-to-hand battle between news teams, or the jazz flute sequence don’t really relate much to the rest of the movie? There’s a half-hearted attempt at satire on 1970s sexism when Veronica first arrives, but that’s milked for a couple of gags and then forgotten. At times the lack of a connecting thread can get irritating, as if the cast are continually yelling “Hey, you think that’s funny? Well look at this! Look at me! Isn’t this funny too?”
Sequels
With such huge success for Anchorman, Will Ferrell was inevitably going to make a follow-up, and he did. Two in fact. Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby brought the Anchorman approach to ice skating and motor-racing respectively, and the box office returns showed that people hadn’t got tired of it. Ferrell has created a franchise more than a film with Anchorman, though he should take note that a lot of reviews of Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights contained comments along the lines of “not really as funny as that Ron Burgundy movie.”
