Sex, laughs and videotape

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Staff Writer

8:07 AM EDT, July 8, 2004

Will Ferrell stars as anchorman Ron Burgundy in DreamWorks Pictures' comedy "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." (AP Photo/Frank Masi)

(PG-13) Affiliate of soul: At a '70s San Diego TV station, a low-wattage newsman gets a hard lesson in women's lib. Goofy, good-natured and about as bright as a lava lamp. Drop a star if your idea of a good time is "The Notebook." With Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Fred Willard, Steve Carel, David Koechner. Directed by Adam McKay. 1:31 (adult content, language, mock violence). At area theaters.

Any movie that boasts Fred Willard as its island of sanity is seriously unhinged, but what could one expect from "Anchorman"? As its lapel-challenged title character, comedian Will Ferrell uses '70s broadcast news as a mere convenience: Ferrell is -- again -- being Ferrell. And yet the role fits him 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. First-time director and co-writer Adam McKay (formerly of "Saturday Night Live") really couldn't miss: The more inept Ferrell seems, the more he's being true to his shtick.

Not that the filmmakers don't know exactly what they're doing.

At first, though, it seemed they were as clueless as Ron Burgundy, the celebrity newsman who will read anything on air that's put on the TelePrompTer and imagines himself God's gift to the second sex. (Could it possibly have taken till the '70s before women were news anchors? Yes, in fact, 1976, when Barbara Walters co-anchored with Harry Reasoner.)

So much for historical accuracy: That a woman as together as Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) would fall into his bed shows how harebrained this movie is. But she does, turning Ron into a puppy. And then a raving maniac: He may love Veronica, but the idea of her anchoring the news gives the entire all-male Channel Four News Team (played by Paul Rudd, Steve Carel and David Koechner, who have a Jets-Sharks relationship with their rival station) a case of apoplexy: Women are biologically unequipped to read the evening news. Getting Veronica off the air becomes a near-religious crusade.

Adding to the air of Burgundian pomposity is narrator Bill Kurtis, the former newsman-turned-tabloid TV voice, who narrates Ron's story. Ultimately, the points are really Ron's vacuous vanity, Veronica's relatively saintly endurance, Rudd's mustachioed resemblance to Geraldo Rivera and the close proximity of the movie's parody of Nixon-era TV news to the pablum still served up today: panda births, the world's greatest meatloaf and cats dressed up as Roman centurions.

Watching Ferrell can become hard labor, but here, as in last year's sparkling "Elf," he's surrounded by the proper cast support (especially Carel, of "The Daily Show," whose character makes Ron look like Noam Chomsky), as well as several set pieces so smart they rescue themselves: Ron, singing "Afternoon Delight," is unbearable -- until his three stooge-like sidekicks join him in four-part harmony. Ron may be an idiot, but "Anchorman" is no dope.