THE KID'S REVIEW OF:
ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY (2004)

OPENING THOUGHTS

    Another Saturday Night Live alum makes a big budget Hollywood movie. I hope it's as good as Corky Romano!!

ACTING

    WILL FERRELL was shot into stardom with this movie. When the time comes for the E! True Hollywood Story about Ferrell this movie will be cited as the moment he became a movie star. As the title character he's great, fucking spot on. Doing what he does best, Ferrell plays a loud obnoxious blow hard who doesn't know when to stop. It's basically the best attributes of all his SNL characters rolled into one. His performance is made of pure gold and hard to replicate, the only person I can see beating it is Barbra Streisand.
    CHRISTINA APPLEGATE could have easily been swallowed by all the talent in the movie... I bet they were wishing she would swallow them, though. ZING! But she didn't, she held her ground and busted out the comedy chops we all knew/hoped she had. Way to go girlfriend!
    THE SUPPORTING CAST deserved one hell of an MTV style shout out. Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner served as Burgundy's faithful crew and provided not only most of the reach-arounds on set but also the laughs in the final cut of the film.

DIRECTION AND SCRIPT

    ADAM MCKAY popped his cherry with this film. I think what he did best was step back and let the obscenely hilarious cast do what they need to do. Don't fuck with what's not broken!
    ADAM MCKAY and WILL FERRELL "wrote" the script. With no certainty can I say how much was scripted and how much was made up. Let's be generous and say 75% was scripted, and they wrote a damn fine script. But anyway you breakdown the fractions, its brilliant shit. Funny dialogue, an outlandish yet well held together story, it's all there for a hit.

THE VERDICT

    This is one of the greats and it will remain so until Jesus Christ himself comes back. And when he does, he very well may have this playing on his iPod video.
 
 

RATING: A

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