I am Ron Burgundy?

ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY (2004)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia (originally reviewed in 2006)

 Much like the title character, "Anchorman" is a befuddled, vapid yet thoroughly pleasing cartoon comedy. Like every other comedy nowadays, it is a movie not content with just humoring us - it pushes its reality barrier to Warner Brother cartoon extremes.

Will Ferrell is the fictitious Ron Burgundy, a fairly simple-minded San Diego anchorman who reads everything on his teleprompter without blinking twice, and I mean every punctuation mark, even if it's incorrect. At one point, someone mistakenly places a question mark after his sign off ("I am Ron Burgundy?") Ron Burgundy and his news team have the highest ratings in San Diego, and Ron is not just a preening show-off - he especially takes pride in boasting of his exploits to women who find him attractive. The last thing he wants though is for a woman to be on equal footing. Ron's boss (Fred Willard) has just hired an ambitious, attractive and steadfastly determined woman, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) to be anchorwoman. Ron and his buddies vehemently protest this new hire, to the point that they all try to sexually harass her so she'll quit. No sale. In one of the movie's funniest scenes, Ron calls Veronica's desk and pretends to be a news organization from Moscow ("Pack your bags. You're leaving tomorrow morning.")

Most of "Anchorman" deals with Ron's periodic outbursts in front of and behind the camera. There is also a tremendously funny scene where Ron's news team confronts other competing news teams in a street fight! For animal activists, they may cringe at a poor dog kicked out of a bridge like a football! Mostly, this is about Ron Burgundy with a personal crisis - he loves Veronica but he can't stand to see her as an anchorwoman. Feminists may scoff at the movie's underlying sexism - women only exist to be screwed and nothing else. But, hey, there is always true love in the end.

Will Ferrell is in wickedly bristling, restrained form as the mustachioed, romantic anchorman. For the first time in any of his films, I felt genuine pity for his character as he tries so hard to be accepted. Ferrell is no great actor but he is a breezy comic find - more roles of this stature (including "Melinda and Melinda") and he may reach the pantheon of truly great comic actors.

With cameos from Jack Black to Ben Stiller and an engaging presence like Christina Applegate, "Anchorman" scores a few direct laughs and some big howlers (and kudos to casting Steve Carell as a character far more dim-witted than Ron). It is a frenzied cartoon of a comedy, and it kept me smiling from start to finish.