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ANCHORMAN

BY MARK BAZER

The concept — a puerile 1970s local-evening-news team threatened by the station’s first female reporter — is pretty damn great. And the non-stop silly jokes and bits recall the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker brand of humor in that they keep coming and show no regard for reality. So even if many of the film’s individual characters aren’t worth remembering an hour after you see the movie, Anchorman is almost always hilarious. It even spares us the maudlin crap that ruins the last 30 minutes of most mainstream comedies. Will Ferrell, who wrote the script with director Adam McKay, a former Saturday Night Live head writer, can do no comedic wrong these days. And though his dorky lothario character, head anchorman Ron Burgundy, is not one of my favorite Ferrell creations, he’s still full of endearingly smarmy lines, like his signature on-air signoff: "You stay classy, San Diego." Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Fred Willard, The Daily Show’s Steve Carell, and David Koechner help out, and there are plenty of cameos. (91 minutes)


Issue Date: July 9 - 15, 2004
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