Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

With the recent demise of At the Movies, various clips of classic arguments, pans and raves have received regular play on blogs. One of the most frequently cited, and truly one of the finest moments of the program, is the hilarious split between Siskel & Ebert for the abysmal early '90s comedy Cop and a Half. Siskel, essentially speaking for the nation, hated the film, and his open-faced astonishment at Ebert's thumbs up conveyed the collective reaction of the audience. Cop and a Half became an occasional reference point in the pair's arguments for the last five years of their partnership, possibly replacing Siskel's fondness for fat jokes when looking for an easy jab at his rival.

Yet Ebert's obstinate refusal to feel bad about liking the film, even years later, reveals something important about dumb comedies: if you laugh, you've got to give them a positive write-up. And, God help me, few contemporary screen comedians make me laugh as hard as Will Ferrell. Yes, dear reader, he does the same thing in every film, and at times his shtick wears dangerously thin, but when he works, he works brilliantly. There's something enticing about coiled-spring comedy, in which a mild-mannered individual calmly reacts to the world until suddenly exploding in pent-up rage. Some excel at this (John Cleese, Jason Lee), others simply come off as deranged (Adam Sandler, to a lesser extent Chris Farley). Ferrell is one who can manage it, presenting a thick-headed veneer of unflappable confidence and pride until someone finally points out what a fool he is, setting in motion the eruption.

With Ron Burgundy, Ferrell has a prime vehicle for communicating this talent. Set in the '70s, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy draws a broad caricature of a man with the intersecting lines of the "Me Generation" and the egotistical realm of the TV personality. Ron Burgundy doesn't do any reporting or fact-checking; furthermore, he seems barely literate, only just capable of reading what's placed on a teleprompter without ever stopping to make sure what is scrolling is correct or even logical. All he has going for him is a mustache made for television, and he acts like the arbiter of truth.

Anchorman, despite being set a decade later and being released four years earlier, almost seems like a preemptive parody of Mad Men: Ron, along with his chauvinist colleagues Champ (David Koechner), Brian (Paul Rudd) and functionally retarded Brick (Steve Carell), act remarkably like Don Draper and co. They drink in the office, act as if no law can bind them and hit on every woman in the office as if there solely as a sexual outlet. So self-absorbed are the men that, when the program's boss (Fred Willard) tells the gang that the network wants more "diversity" on the news staff, Ron believes that the word refers to "an old, old wooden ship from the Civil War era."

Casting Christina Applegate as Veronica, the ambitious reporter who benefits from this rearrangement, was a stroke of genius. Applegate's talents can be hit and miss, but when she's on, she can throw back anything chucked at her by a gaggle of male comedians, even when playing the stereotypically career-driven woman who just needs the love of a boorish man to set her on the "proper" life track of a woman. That aspect of the film is as much a joke as anything else, and it's nice that Applegate's most absurd moments involve her falling for an idiot like Ron instead of the film ever trying to sell this as a positive view of relationships.

There is an intense danger in attempting to tie higher aims to films with such Neanderthal premises, but this goofy vision of '70s local news has a smart side to it. Anchorman's placement as the first in the incomplete "Mediocre American Man" trilogy was fortuitously timed to the celebration of mediocrity and incompetence that defined the zeitgeist of the Bush administration, and Bush provided Ferrell with his biggest break on Saturday Night Live. Looking back, the endless jokes on Bush's stupidity that Ferrell conveyed during the 2000 campaign seem frothy and lightweight, little jabs thrown at a man with not much background to speak of even as the governor of a state. But jump forward eight years to Ferrell's taped one-man show, in which he trotted out the Bush character for one last run before sending him out to pasture (or behind a shed). You're Welcome America had the same focal point -- Bush's astonishing ignorance even after eight years on the job -- but what had once been cheeky now seemed vicious and outraged. No longer was Ferrell amused that a moron was running for high office; now he couldn't believe that the country had allowed such a man to run riot for nearly a decade. (In the final scene, Anchorman takes this one step further by saying that Brick would go on to be one of Bush's top advisers, an act that both homages Animal House and caters to this admittedly stretched view of the movie.)

This film, made in 2004, conveys some of that disgust, far removed as it is from politics. The outrage over a woman penetrating the homoerotic inner circle ("It is anchor-MAN, not anchor-LADY, and that is a scientific fact!" screams a belligerent Champ) shows men acting like children. Nearly all of the film's humor stems from jokes at Ron's expense, from his arrogance that is unjustified by either physical attractiveness or mental acuity to his dated belief in what's proper for women. Veronica fights to be seen as an equal, resenting the fluff pieces she gets assigned to by sexist bosses, but Ron's stories are no more important. Only Ron's gravitas makes his items seem vital, but he reports on water-skiing squirrels and the odd wild animal sighting. If this film comments on the pride Americans take in ignorance, then this angle can be seen as an attack on the vacuity of news programs and their perennial inability to cover relevant topics in favor of pandering to the broadest demographic for ratings. The Channel 4 news team thinks a panda giving birth is national news in the wake of Watergate, just as CNN now devotes increasingly less time to anything important and flounders about looking for some trite human-interest piece to save ratings. Hell, even the hysterical rivalry between news channels (other factions led by Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, even Tim Robbins) resembles the incessant pissing contest between 24-hour news channels, and Channel 4's pure arrogance and pride for their drivel matches Fox's own.

Oh, but why weigh down the film with such a reading when its enjoyment lies in its absurdity and its endless one-liners? Quite so, but I believe that Anchorman's cleverness runs deeper than its surface titters. Satire, it ain't, but out of all the pictures put out by Adam McKay and his various collaborators in the subset of the Apatow talent pool, this is by far the most fully realized and insanely re-watchable, precisely because there's some overarching plan to all of this. It may not be an expulsion of the filmmakers' political angst, but the derth of a point that makes Talladega Nights only intermittently entertaining is wholly absent here. Apart from an ending that must surely have come to the gang while under the influence of controlled substances, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy remains one of the funniest and best-cast comedies of the last decade, so funny that even a long-ass collection of outtakes could be haphazardly fashioned into a "sequel" that is also riotous. Maybe it can rise no higher than the status of "lazy Sunday" film, but aren't the movies just so much better when they bring you out of boredom anyway? Stay classy.

Despicable Me

It may not reach the ambitious heights of How to Train Your Dragon or Toy Story 3, but you have to admit: Despicable Me rates a mention if for no other reason than its ad campaign. I distrust all film trailers, but I cannot recall an animated film built up so effectively by the "Gabbo! Gabbo! Gabbo!" approach to teasers. It's a bold gambit to use with a movie targeted to children, not renowned for their attention spans and typically sold to kids with the most condescending disregard imaginable. (It prepares them for all trailers. See: Grown-Ups.) The manner with which the marketing department kept the plot of this film under wraps while generating interest rivals the surreal teasers for Christopher Nolan's upcoming thriller Inception.

Yet Despicable Me has an entertaining, if unoriginal, blend of slapstick and pathos, enough to provide the briefest respite in what may be the worst summer of my 20 -- no, 21 now -- years on this planet. Its protagonist, Gru (Steve Carell), is a villain whose intelligence and ambition do not quite place him in the upper echelon of supervillains as his reach too often exceeds his grasp. After a brief but amusing opening sequence establishes that someone (not Gru) managed to steal the Great Pyramids of Giza, the diminutive evildoer hunts for the new mastermind responsible for the crime of the century while planning an even bigger heist to cement his own name. His idea? Steal the Moon.

Unfortunately, this plot hits the wall fairly quickly: Gru's conflict with the young upstart who rises to sudden prominence, Vector (Jason Segel), begins without steady lead-in and falls away quickly. Sparring over a shrink ray that will allow the wielder to shrink the Moon, Gru and Vector get off a few uproarious scenes of over-the-top fighting, with Gru's fondness for missiles of all sizes and payloads and Vector's penchant for bizarre, marine animal-based weaponry. Yet the storyline shifts suddenly when three orphaned girls -- Margo, Edith and Agnes -- walk around the neighborhood selling cookies. Gru turns them away, but when he sees them get through the defenses in Vector's fortress that kept the rival away, the villain decides that the girls could offer him a way inside Vector's home and a shot at stealing the shrink ray.

I'll leave to figure where the movie heads from here. The presence of the girls, one cautious and hardened from years of loneliness, one venting her own issues through destructive tendencies and the other an adorable miscreant not yet able to comprehend the rotten quality of her life in any meaningful sense, must inevitably lead the scabrous, egomaniacal Gru to become a better man. This would be fine and dandy if it mixed in with the original plot, but Despicable Me slams on the brakes at this point, almost completely tossing out the enticing idea of a fight between two villains for supremacy in a world that seemingly lacks superheroes as a counterbalance.

Thus, the film moves in such a disjointed fashion that its 95 minutes feel twice as long. The total downshift from an epic war between inventive villains with no regard for collateral damage to a pat, sentimental tale of a man learning to love grates like two metal sheets shrieking against each other. Gru uses them to his intended goal in short order, leaving the majority of the film to a plot that's rushed even as it plods along the typical path to feel-good mush.

"When we got adopted by a bald guy," Edith says upon arriving at Gru's twisted mansion and realizing that their adoption might not solve all their problems, "I thought this would be more like Annie." She must not have paid attention, because Despicable Me plays exactly like Annie with a more action-packed twist. Daddy Warbucks didn't take kindly to the orphan in his home either, only for Annie's plucky charm to eventually melt his heart.

Of the three children, Agnes is easily the most visible. An overload of cuteness, Agnes is shamelessly manipulative in design to grab the audience's heartstrings without any effort. To be sure, her mere presence bypasses an intuitive and subtle emotional arc in favor of puppy eyes and the dramatic irony that can only come from a toddler who doesn't understand how depressing her optimism really is. Yet she's such a fun character that the effrontery of her usage does not derail the picture and is instead one of its greatest aspects. Her obsession with unicorns and all things fluffy make her the cutest girl to appear in animation since Boo in Monsters Inc.

Her cuteness is counterbalanced by the hilarity of Gru's minions. A sea of tiny, yellow, gibbering creatures, the minions waver between massive incompetence and an almost Oompa-Loompa-type efficiency, devolving into infighting and office pranksterism yet proving their mettle when it counts. Directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud mine these mad blobs for all they're worth, subjecting them to the experiments of Gru's aged, hearing-impaired assistant, Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand(?)), having them punch each other over mischievous activity and even messing with their bodies when one cracks another's back and shakes him until the assaulted minion emits a neon yellow like a glow stick. Not a single scene involving the minions fails to get a laugh and, combined with Agnes' endearing adorableness, they float what would otherwise be a lackadaisical comedy.

The great shame of the film is that the potential to be a great animated picture lies in plain sight. Some more adult humor finds its way into the picture, such as a gag involving a secret bank that lends millions to supervillains around the world noting on a plaque that it used to be Lehman Brothers. The simple notion of two villains duking it out for prominence without a hero to intervene could have made for a delicious game of animated oneupsmanship, which exists at the beginning and end and could have stretched the imaginations of the animators with increasingly outlandish fights in what would basically have been a matter of two Bond villains emptying all their ridiculous devices at each other. Instead, it takes the easy way out, using a rotten, context-less score by Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira and a few close-ups to wrench emotionality that the film does not earn.

Still, it's funny enough to warrant a viewing, and even the smallest snatches of enjoyment are welcome in a year as wretched as this. I laughed a great deal and bordered on whispering an "awwww" or two despite my own best interests, and if the film was just a bit tighter I might have recommended it unconditionally over my wishes to see the villain war continue uninterrupted. But there is one lovely piece of thoughtfulness in the nexus point where the two plots meet: Gru's mother. Through her, we see a neglected boy, whose dreams of becoming an astronaut were dashed by a snarky parent, now on the cusp of ensuring that no one else could ever know his dream of walking on the Moon. At the same time, his adopted children provide him with the opportunity to break the cycle of neglect and loneliness that made him so miserable. That line is not fully explored, but it's just one more hint that makes an average movie entertaining, and could have made it so much more.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin- Unrated Version

I swear, every time I sit down with this film, I have this preconceived notion that it's not quite as funny as people claim, that I think its edge has dulled a bit, then I actually watch the film and laugh as hard as I did the first time. If you held a gun to my head and demanded I explain why I continue to think the film will hold nothing for me when it always keeps me completely entertained, I'd have no answer for you. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall may very well eclipse 40YOV as the chief representative of Apatow Productions in my book, this will likely stand as the best thing Apatow himself directed for some time to come.

Based on a concept originally conceived by Steve Carell in his Second City days, The 40-Year-Old Virgin is one of those films that tells you everything you need to know right in the title. Carell plays the lead, Andy Stitzer, a genial, socially awkward nerd who works the stockroom of an electronics store. He knows all the ins and outs of the hardware, but he's too shy to be a salesman. At home, his walls are packed with mint condition action figures worth a small fortune, but of course he'd never sell them. He's bit of a stereotypical nerd, yes, but with enough charm to at least bend the archetype if not break free of it.

At work, his colleagues waver between sympathy for Andy's maladjustment and fear that he might one day kill them all. After all, he looks like the last person in the world who'd snap, and those are the ones you have to keep an eye on. Eventually David (Paul Rudd), Cal (Seth Rogen) and Jay (Romany Malco) invite him to a poker game, where they all end up sharing lurid stories of past sexcapades, and press Andy for an anecdote of his own. At last, the truth comes out: Andy's still a virgin.

For the rest of the film, these three do everything in their power to get their new pal laid: they teach Andy how to interact with women and how to attract them, but Andy resists. Most of the information he gets from his friends is emotionless and sexist, designed solely to lead to a one-night stand, but he wants an actual relationship. Nevertheless, he does follow his friends to clubs and even manages to pick up a thoroughly trashed young woman (played by Leslie Mann) and ride home with her in an achingly funny scene.

Slowly his friends bring out some confidence in Andy, and he not only lands a spot on the sales floor but meets Trish (Catherine Keener), a sweet woman who runs a store across the street that sells people's unwanted junk on Ebay. Why would anyone use a middleman for Ebay? No one knows, and it's a recurring joke, though thankfully it only gets mentioned a few times. Trish is roughly the same age as Andy and a mother of three, one of whom has a child of her own. Though the two hit it off and she wants to sleep with Andy, sex isn't high on her list of priorities, either.

The middle sags a bit, as it apparently must with AP movies, but then again I'm watching the unrated cut. I never got to see this in theaters because of age limits, so I made do with the DVD.* Several scenes, chiefly the Date-a-Palooza, drag on to get in repetitive gags that weren't even that funny to begin with. I also have a beef with Kat Denning's character. Since the film I've come to enjoy her, but her character here forces her to be in hysterics the whole time spouting absolute nonsense to her mother like "How come you get to have sex when I can't?!" which is nightmarishly stupid even by self-absorbed teenager standards. She eventually bottoms out into a likable character, but it's evidence of the weak female roles that populate most of the films Apatow puts his name to these days.

Nevertheless, even in this extended version--17 minutes longer than the original cut--The 40-Year-Old Virgin is well-paced and screamingly funny from start to finish. If Knocked Up contains just enough laughs to be worth it, this goes above and beyond the call of duty. Only one or two scenes really falter, and the rest get across both laughs and heart without having to gear-shift between them. Apart from Dennings' bawling teen brat (I refuse to blame her for what was simply a bad character) and Keener's narrowly-defined role, everyone puts in great work and every character (even Dennings') gets at least one big laugh. There are a few obvious moments--like Andy's saccharine lines to Trish near the end-- but overall the film achieves a great balance between the filth and the sugar, and damned if I'm not entertained every time.


*I know that Blu-Ray versions of the film come with both versions, and if you want to send me money for a PS3 I'll happily upgrade.