 It's not likely to draw away much of Spider-Man 2's audience, but Will Ferrell's Anchorman -- The Legend of Ron Burgundy is being viewed by critics as fitting counterprogramming to the young superhero. Funny, too. Several reviewers observe that they have known TV anchorpersons just like the one depicted by Ferrell. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times even issues this disclaimer: "I have known and worked with a lot of anchorpersons, even female anchorpersons, over the years, and I can tell you that almost all of them are good people -- smart professionals who don't take themselves too seriously. But every once in a while you get a Ron Burgundy, and you kind of treasure him, because you can dine out on the stories for years." Nevertheless, most of the critics appear to agree that the film is incessantly silly. Not that there's anything wrong with that, they seem to add. Ty Burr in the Boston Globe writes: "Sloppy, crude, pursuing the most far-flung tangents in hopes of a laugh, Anchorman still gave me more stupid giggles than I'd care to admit if I weren't paid to." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News describes the movie as "intermittently hilarious and flat-out stupid." John Anderson in Newsday writes that the title role fits Ferrell "like a custom-tailored leisure suit. If you like what he does (and not everyone does), Anchorman provides exactly what you'd expect -- solid laughs, solid misses, the jokes that fail being almost as funny as the ones that don't, because Ferrell's patent cluelessness is itself the heart of the matter." For Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post, the movie represents a case of "tone over sense." He adds: "It's a skit, but so ingeniously constructed and convincingly executed that it manages to sustain its energy far beyond sketch length." Clearly, the critics agree, the success or failure of the movie hinges on the audience's response to Ferrell. And Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times says he's "the best thing to hit mainstream American movie comedy since the Farrellys thwacked it with spit and giggles." But Joel Siegel of ABC's Good Morning America concludes that Ferrell's character "is just a jerk." |
