That's Will Ferrell in the lead role. How is this the same guy who voiced Megamind in Megamind? Megamind was a truly awesome comedy movie. Anchorman is a truly rubbish comedy movie.
I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. Let explain the premise behind this movie. Roy Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell, is a successful 1970s television anchorman for the San Diago news. The world he's in apparently runs differently from the world we live in, because the top story of the year, which the climax of the film takes place around, is...wait for it...a Panda giving birth at the local zoo. Is this a joke, something we are supposed to laugh at? Difficult to tell. None of the audience I was with laughed, at any rate.
Things change when a new worker arrives to shake up the world of Roy and his eccentric crew of friends: a woman, Veronica Corningstone (played by Christina Applegate). Predictably, the men of the station respond with over the top outrage, then try to seduce her. Their leery approaches are met with swift rebuffs and an occasional punch to the balls. Because, getting punched in the balls is always, unfailing funny, right? Right?
And as for Roy? Why, when he first meets Veronica, it's love at first sight...
...and from there, any hopes of this movie being remotely original fizzled and died in me. From there, anyone with a passing familiarity with romantic comedies can predict the plot twists with their eyes closed. Yep, there's the initial awkwardness/frostiness between the lead man and woman, which quickly develops into full-blown True Love. Yep, there's the plot twist that drives them apart and causes hostilities . Yep, that's them making up and kissing at the climax of the story, almost certainly to marry and live happily ever after. Yawn.
The trite, cliche, by the numbers plot wasn't the only problem with this movie, though it was a glaring one. the lead character, Roy Burgundy, was not very funny or compelling at all. He's supposed to be a lovable idiot, it seems. The movie opens with of a montage of him muttering and shouting inane lines, as if his LOUD BLASTING VOICE automatically makes said lines funny. Funny thing, it doesn't work like that. Sadly, this pretty much sets the scene for the character and the movie. I have a hard time remembering the name of anyone. None of the supporting characters have very much to offer, humor-wise or plot-wise. Veronica starts out potentially interesting, but quickly degenerates into the love interest, the satellite character we have all seen a million times before.
Ultimately, the problem with this movie is simple. It bills itself as a light-hearted slapstick comedy but it just isn't funny. It's pretty hard to find anything actually good in this movie, or anything truly horrendous in quality. I can count the number of times we actually laughed on one hand, and that just isnt enough for two hours. This movie was a chore to sit through, it was mediocre, it was boring.
Final verdict: 4/10. Don't bother with this film. It is highly unlikely to be worth two hours of your life.
