MOVIES: Anchorman

I have very rarely laughed as hard at any film as I did at Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Hell, I saw it twice over the weekend, and laughed just as hard the second time. The film is uneven in spots; some bits go on for too long, and one or two bits just don't quite work at all. But when it works, it's hysterical.

The main reason, of course, is Will Ferrell. Let's face it, he's the new comedy kingpin. And it's about time. After far too long being the best thing about very lousy movies (the SNL sketch-based Superstar, The Ladies' Man, A Night at the Roxbury), he is now the best thing about very funny movies (Elf, Old School, even his brief appearance in Starsky & Hutch). And all is right in the world.

As funny as Ferrell is, though -- as much as he is the star of the film, like his Ron Burgundy is the star of 1970s San Diego TV news -- to his credit, he's surrounded himself with some amazing talent. Paul Rudd as Brian Fantana ("I know what you're thinking: 'Does he have a nickname for his penis?' And the answer is yes. I call it the Octagon.") is note-perfect; Rudd, like Ferrell, has often been the best thing about very lousy movies, and deserves to be a much bigger star than he is. David Koechner as the slightly-too-fond-of-Ron Champ Kind is also a riot. And Steve Carell as the incredibly dense Brick Tamland steals every scene, as usual. (When Brick doesn't understand why everyone is yelling, but still desperately wants to join in, he resorts to screaming, "LOUD NOISES!!!") Fred Willard, Chris Parnell, Fred Armisen, and so many others I can't name without spoiling the great surprise of seeing them pop up... it's a surplus of comedic firepower. Oh, and Christina Applegate as Veronica Corningstone is okay, too, I guess.

(I actually felt a little bad for Applegate, whom I think must have experienced the same pressure on the set of the film as her character does within the film: she's entered a very close-knit men's club, and she has to fight for every laugh she gets, and those laughs usually only come by playing off the men.)

The story, about an all-male TV news team invaded by its first female reporter, is silly to begin with, and a great deal of humor is mined from these ridiculously set-in-their-ways chauvinists dealing with a woman (Brick: "I heard their periods attract bears!"), but the film often goes way, way over the top, as in the cameo-studded full-scale newscaster battle scene, complete with medieval weaponry, Planet of the Apes-style horseback net attacks, and severed limbs (cameo newscaster, on having his arm chopped off: "I did not see that coming!").

Sometimes the craziness goes on a little too long, as in that battle scene, or a cartoon trip to "Pleasure Town," but in at least three scenes, the film nails the exact level of craziness necessary for maximum hilarity, and had me laughing so hard my sides were hurting, and I could hardly see the screen from the tears in my eyes.

The first scene is when Brian Fantana mistakenly believes his "Sex Panther" cologne will allow him to seduce Corningstone. The horrible odor has the exact opposite effect; she wonders aloud at the rancid stench: "It smells like a dirty diaper filled with Indian food!" (From around the newsroom: "It smells like a turd covered in burnt hair!" "It smells like Bigfoot's dick!") The second comes when Burgundy, heartbroken over a tragic event, calls Fantana from a phone booth, and dissolves into incoherent shrieking -- no words can capture Ferrell's side-splitting hysteria in this scene. I haven't laughed so hard in a theater since the "franks and beans" scene of There's Something About Mary. I'm still laughing now, just thinking about it. And the third scene is played entirely in subtitles, and I don't even want to say anything more than that about it, other than to note that it demonstrates that the film, though heavily reliant on Ferrell, is actually very funny independent of him as well.

But, yes, Ferrell is the main reason to see this film. He's never hit so many notes so well. From the wild emotional breakdown I mentioned above, to the subtler laughs garnered with just a brief sentence or a gesture, he's non-stop funny. Some of his funniest bits are derived from his plain-spoken, obvious reactions to circumstances. When Fantana douses himself in "Sex Panther" and proudly says, "60% of the time, it works every time," Burgundy's immediate deadpan response: "That doesn't make sense." Of course it doesn't, but somehow only Burgundy is aware of it. Or when Burgundy is stumbling around the streets, broken and disheveled, drinking from a carton of milk: "It's so hot. Milk was a bad choice." Or when he leaps into a bear pit at the zoo: "I immediately regret this decision."

Anchorman would've been very funny if everyone had adhered strictly to character, and the events had played out in some approximation of the real world. But the fact that the film allows itself to take these absurd detours into the utterly illogical is what pushes it over the top into a new comedy classic. I can't imagine a funnier film being released this year.