Ace's Belated Movie Recommendations: Anchorman

For some reason I got the feeling this movie wasn't funny. The stuff they showed in the commercials wasn't all that funny, and the reviews were mixed at best.

Someone had a bootleg of it a long time ago and I half-heard it while playing poker. It didn't sound good.

But, it's on HBO now (HBO on Demand, for those of you with digital), and I've watched it about two and a half times in the past three days.

It's hysterical. I think the reason the commercials didn't seem very funny is that it sort of requires a learning curve to find it funny. It's just so utterly stupid, and Will Ferrel is such an absurd caricature, it takes a little bit to build on itself until everything in the movie gets funny.

That deep, pompous voice. Man. I love the line:

I have one burning passion in my loins. Like a flaming, golden hhhhawkkhh.

That's just "hawk," but all drawn out and over-annunciated. Like the way Kirk used to say "Spockkkkhhh" instead of "Spock."

"By the Beard of Zeus!" and "Sweet Odin's Raven!" are also pretty funny exclamations by Ferrell.

Anyway, if you've avoided this movie so far, take a look. The first five minutes you're going to think it's the most retarded piece of shit you've ever seen. But then... it becomes transcendent.

Transcendantly retarded, but still.

Oh, and there's a shitload of cameos. Half are from SNL, and half are the sort of people that always show up in these sorts of movies. Apparently Hollywood has decided that it can't make a comedy unless it contains three of four from this list: Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughan, Will Ferrel, and at least one of the Wilson brothers.

Political Shit? Some people say they stayed away due to the movie's anti-Bush content.

Well, all that is is one line at the end of the movie, when they're describing what happened to all the characters later in life. The retarded character became a key Bush advisor.

A dumb joke and only for liberals, but really, it's not like one line at the very end of a movie can really ruin a movie.

So, the one guy in Animal House ended up working for the Nixon White House and going to jail over Watergate... doesn't make the Vaughan Liebowitz scene any less funny. (And vicious.)

Just sayin' -- this sort of joke is made all the time by Hollywood. Anchorman makes one four-second anti-Bush joke. In Hollywood terms, that almost makes it pro-Bush.

posted by Ace at 01:36 AM

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