"Anchorman" : An Unbiased Review

Avoid this picture at all costs. I daresay your time would be better spent reading a book written in a language you don’t understand. In fact, doing absolutely nothing at all, I feel, is a far superior alternative to watching this film. Life is just too short.

Written by SNL alumnus Will Ferrell and recent SNL head writer Adam Mckay (directed by the latter), “Anchorman” in no way makes a notable connection with the comedic realm. One maybe entitled to --perhaps-- a single hearty guffaw, but only in the way one receives lime-flavored sherbet when he’s struck down with a violent bout of rubella.

The first fifteen minutes of the movie is wastefully spent attempting to outline characterization for the primary and secondary personnel of the story. The rest is the camera carelessly trained on Ferrell who, as it appears, is struggling to ad lib bizarre and irrelevant rejoinders to any information his aseptic character perceives. If, at the end, you are still not perplexed by how unflinchingly Ferrell’s character, Ron Burgandy, transposes ignorantly between dialects, mannerisms, and temperaments-- then the denouement will probably leave you wondering where you are and how you got there. Hope for as much, for if you are not thoroughly annoyed with Ferrell’s puerile shenanigans, the residual cast will frankly chafe you like wet undergarments. Especially the dimwitted weatherman whose only function is to repeat the lines of other characters, but especially the cowboy hat parading sports anchor, Champ Kind, who is absolutely not tolerable from the first frame he is flashed about on-screen. Your only reward (aside from one truly funny moment that has scarcely anything to do with any of the main characters) comes in about the sixty-second minute of the film when the audience is treated to an onslaught of not-so-surprising cameos and, to say the least, it’s not much of a reward.

If you absolutely HAVE to attend this movie, do so with a bucket of Nyquil-laced popcorn and a host of other highly potent sedatives.

But who knows?

You might like it.