Flak Magazine: Review of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 07.23.04

Bill Murray's funniest characters have always had a deep sadness lurking underneath the wackiness. Even Carl Spackler, whom sports talk radio lauded as the greatest Murray character during last year's build-up to the Oscars, harbored unattainable fantasies of winning the Masters. Murray made his career on mustering faux-machismo in the face of authority and wealth, always masking the character's underlying self-doubt. Consider Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, who knows he's a failed pseudo-scientist and resorts to smarm to hit on undergrads. As the character evolves, it's as if Venkman makes himself buy into his own bullshit because it's all he has, noticeably acting as if he actually has a shot with Sigourney Weaver or that the Ghostbusters can actually defeat Zuul.

This layering of Murray's characters gives them a lasting quality beyond his virtuoso comedic style, and as Murray has gotten older, this layering of comedy, sadness and bravado has become a more serious and affecting portrait of the helplessness of the modern "guy." Writers and directors are now attuned to Murray's deceptively complex screen persona: Why else would Sofia Coppola have written the male lead in Lost in Translation for Murray, if not to tap into the profound subtleties of his actor-playing-an-actor characterizations? Even Harold Ramis, a member of that comedic troupe that dominated cinematic comedy in the '80s, made his best film by exploring Murray's persona (here in the guise of smarmy small-fry television personality Phil Connors) through the conceit of Groundhog Day.

Today's moviegoing public is witnessing the rise of the Gen X Bill Murray in Will Ferrell, cinema's new comedy champion. Ferrell's post-SNL leading performances, Frank the Tank and Buddy the Elf, are the screaming-insanity kind of wacky, but look at what drives these characters: Both are rudderless Gen X guys, adrift and helpless in a world where their sincerity, goodwill and awkward sweetness are no longer saleable. Anchorman's Ron Burgundy is a photonegative of these guys — still a picture of masculine patheticness, but this time from the selfish, chauvinist Me Decade. Think of Burgundy as Ferrell's early-career Phil Connors.

So what does Ferrell, who co-wrote the movie with director Adam McKay, have to say about the modern man of the 1970s? Consider that the title references the 2002 documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. This is a time when "chicks" were "broads," when men could believe that guys as fat, hairy, mustachioed, ugly and morally and socially repugnant as them were really attractive to women. In this way, local legend Ron Burgundy lives in a kind of '70s porno-world in which he simply reads the news off the teleprompter and then goes to parties and swaggers around because, hey, he's on TV. The ladies love him, and as Burgundy convinces his news team crew at a pool party over a glass of scotch on the rocks, "This is not at all pathetic!" In fact, Ferrell even makes a dig at the chauvinism of the new century, in which guys spend hours in the gym sculpting their chests and arms for the ladies. Ferrell's first pass at hot new girl Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) involves him curling a dumbbell while shirtless, his flabby gut hanging over his belt, not a trace of muscle in sight. The statement is directed at the relative pussiness of his young-male demographic: You spend your hours at the gym looking good for the ladies, while Ron Burgundy just drinks scotch and scores. A real man's man doesn't give a damn.

The difference between Anchorman and a '70s throwback like Starsky and Hutch is in the feeling wrought by the attention to detail. It's pretty clear that Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are just playing dress-up because the movie relies on its props to make it '70s; it's just Stiller and Wilson doing their shtick with different hair. To contrast, Anchorman embodies that sort of chauvinism, so jokes about scotch and bad suits and indomitable cologne work a lot better. The gags stem directly from how Burgundy's pretension overlays his unspoken self-loathing, making every statement a newscast, even when he's lonely at home talking to his dog, "You're so wise. You're like a miniature Buddha, covered with hair." The best line of the film sums up Ferrell's entire approach to Burgundy: "I'm trapped in a glass case of emotion!"

Anchorman cultivates Burgundy's self-important loneliness throughout its first two acts. What separates amateur chauvinists like Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) from a guy like Burgundy is his bag of tricks: Fantana thinks a treasure trove of cologne varieties is the key to landing a chick; Burgundy seduces Corningstone by jamming on the flute after a newscast. Here, Burgundy circles back to Ferrell's other characters: He's completely baffled by love. A lesser movie would give the character some earnest speech to "endear" him to the audience, chalk it up to "character development" and then get to the next gag before entirely killing the momentum of the movie. Anchorman, however, is no ordinary comedy. Burgundy's explanation of love is an a capella rendition of "Afternoon Delight" with his news team. The scene is certainly funny just for the performance, but it's in character, period-appropriate, useful in terms of story momentum and, it so happens, more earnest than some half-assed speech.

Anchorman has enough respect for its audience to try harder than movies like Starsky and Hutch — Ben Stiller sliding across the Gran Torino is funny the first time you see it, but Stiller goes to that well at least a half-dozen times. For the obligatory sex scene, instead of resorting to Starsky's tired fake-lesbian kiss, Anchorman cuts to an extended animated sequence with Burgundy and Corningstone riding wild horses through a starry blue sky, with Veronica shouting, "Ron, let's go make love on that rainbow" — again, it's both funny and a true character moment because this is Ron Burgundy's screwed-up idea of true romance.

Admittedly, the movie goes completely insane in the last act. Perhaps the romance doesn't quite work, and there are some sloppy plot problems. Still, when the movie just lets loose, it's built up enough goodwill that the audience will buy anything it throws at us. The ending — which involves the coverage of that ubiquitous local-news time-waster, a birth at the zoo — is completely ridiculous … but you've never seen anything quite like it. And one cannot precisely account for the sublime Steve Carell as Brick Tamland, the vacant weatherman, who screws up a pick-up line by saying, "There's a pants party, you want to come?" and observing that Fantana's cologne smells like "the time a raccoon got in the copier."

Ferrell and his crew can pull off moments like this, but there's something that elevates Anchorman above the spate of films by this new group of screen comedians who fancy themselves the Murray/Ackroyd/Belushis of the new millennium. There's a gang battle between the local news teams that doesn't make any sense in the context of the movie, but it's filled with appearances by almost everyone in this troupe. These guys get huge laughs because they ham up the few scenes of their cameos, but it's easy to remember how they've each failed to carry entire movies. How can one look at Ben Stiller's résumé from this year and consider him a great screen comedian? He's not, and when the Wilson brothers aren't working with Wes Anderson, neither are they. Vince Vaughn needs to understand that he's not a leading man. But unwittingly, this scene verifies what Ferrell's reviews and box office have already begun to reveal — that's he's a giant among mortals.

Will Ferrell will someday be nominated for an Oscar. It may take a decade or two for all this manic ironic-macho bravado to mellow into something truly profound, but his early-career indications are that this guy has potential to make a lasting impression. Ferrell, like Murray, seems to understand that comedy itself is just a veneer over cruelty, pity or depression, and he builds that into his characters. With Ferrell, you think about the characters first, not the gags themselves, because the gags are usually just natural extensions of the character. Anchorman has the anarchist spirit of Murray's best movies, but not quite the range; it's clear that Ferrell has yet to find his Harold Ramis. Still, Anchorman works well enough as an impressionist ode to and send-up of pre-Gen X misogyny. It's the sort of thing that sports talk-radio listeners will hail and film fans will smile at 20 years from now during Ferrell's Oscar run.

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)