Anchorman
Will Ferrell comedy offers solid laughs among bizarre tone shifts

All I can say is that I laughed a lot at "Anchorman," though I am not sure why. Its satire about chauvinism in the newsrooms of the the mid-1970s isn't very focused, certainly not sharp or biting; its tone is wildly inconsistent, and I never could figure out the universe this film inhabits — is it San Diego, California, 1975, or some totally alien whacky bizarro land? The film's characters range from normal to mostly normal people to broadly drawn caricatures barely recognizable as humans. Sometimes the characters will be the first in one scene, and lurch into the other from one scene to the next. It's hard sometimes to pin them down.

This is especially true of Will Ferrell's title character, Ron Burgundy. In one scene he is pompous and egotistical, but in a way that allows you to identify: "Hey, he's just exactly like Joe at work." But in the next scene Ferrell plays the comedy so far over the top that it's as if the person behind you in line at the grocery store suddenly turned into a werewolf: the whole clothes ripping, hair sprouting, muzzle stretching transformation. Yet the people around Ferrell never even register surprise or frown in puzzled confusion at his antics, which is the only proper reaction to his behavior.

Usually, such a film makes me angry and resentful and wishing the whole film industry would just stop making movies, just pack it all up and go away because it doesn't seem like there's any point to the enterprise anymore: "You spent 75 million and all you managed to come up with is this!?!"

Instead, I found myself laughing out loud. Even though I knew that I shouldn't be, I was laughing out loud. Go figure.

Part of the reason, perhaps, is that "Anchorman" has no pretensions at all that it is not a silly movie. Ron Burgundy starts the movie as a man-child, and he remains a man-child at the end of the film. Cartoonish characters in other movies of this kind always seem to go off on some mini-voyage of self-discovery, and at the end the filmmakers have the audacity to waste our time with all the previous silliness, only to pretend later that the man-child really has some deep wisdom to impart, if only we could be wise enough to hear it. Blah.

Not so in "Anchorman." Near the end of the movie, the moral of the story is presented to Ron by a rough-hewn bartender (the always welcome Danny Trejo), but Ron — man-child — has tuned the guy out from almost the first word. "Excuse me," he tells the English-speaking bartender, "but I don't speak Spanish."

The film is packed with perhaps a dozen genuine comic talents, some taking small cameo roles. That could explain the laughs, too. Performers of this caliber are bound to do at least one thing that is funny, even if that thing doesn't make any sense. Most of them do at least three things that are funny, so the laughs add up.

Fred Willard, David Koechner, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell fill out the cadre of sexist newsroom males. Willard, perhaps the quickest improv talent in the world, serves as the comedic ballast to Ferrell's anchorman, providing just enough grounding to the proceedings that the others are free to go a little nuts sometimes.

Koechner, Rudd and Carell are part of Burgundy's news anchor team, and their parts are each played to perfection. Koechner is a cowboy-hatted sportscaster, master of all the usual sports cliches; Rudd is the "investigative reporter" whose reports never go deeper than the 30 or so seconds that it takes to present them "Live, from the scene"; and Carrell is absolutely hilarious as the weatherman whose bright-eyed delivery of the weather completely hides the fact that once the cameras stop rolling, what's going on behind those bright beady eyes is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.

With Ferrell, the men make a solid comedic ensemble. They idolize Burgundy, but his top dog role is shown to have less to do with his leadership qualities and everything to do with the fact that his gang are a pack of desperate followers. This is perfectly illustrated in one hilarious shot. On their lunch hour, the men pick up corndogs from a vendor in the park. They continue walking, but one or two bites of the corndog later, Ron decides that he's done and flings it, half-eaten, to the ground. Splat, splat, splat! The other men can't ditch their own half-eaten corndogs fast enough in their hurry to emulate Ron. I watched this scene a few times just to admire how beautifully choreographed it was. The whole bit is over in less than three seconds.

The plot of "Anchorman" involves a bright young ambitious female journalist (Christina Applegate) attempting to break the gender barrier in the Ron's male-only newsclub. The idea that women can't read the news just as well as men isn't a topic that lends itself to much scrutiny, so "Anchorman" takes broader swipes at the "local news" industry. Ron can read the news off a teleprompter and is a local celebrity, but that certainly doesn't turn him into the "journalist" he claims to be. The film also makes hay out of the concept of competing "local news" turf wars. All the stations are reporting the exact same pointless crap; it's only the on-camera presentation that differs, yet they seem to believe that their little turf war is a battle for the soul of journalism itself.

In a scene where "Anchorman" takes its biggest slide into Bizarro World the turf war becomes a literal battle in an all-out rumble in an abandoned lot. During the battle, reporters die or are maimed. Oh, the humanity. You'd think a battle like that would make the news, but it doesn't.

"Anchorman's" weirdly shifting comedy core might put some viewers off, as it normally would for me. All I can tell you is that, for whatever reason, it made me laugh, which for me is the best gauge of whether something is funny. Having laughed a lot throughout "Anchorman" it would be dishonest of me to say that the film isn't funny. But I do wish it would have staked out its universe a little better — even if that universe was Bizarro World — and had the discipline to stay with it.