21. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

[has it really been 10 years?
...as of July 5th, apparently it will be]


Code-name: Brick


Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Adam McKay and Will Ferrell
Notable Producers: Judd Apatow, (executive) David O. Russell
Type: Frat Pack Comedy


Cast:
Ron Burgundy- Will Ferrell
Veronica Corningstone- Christina Applegate
Brian Fantana- Paul Rudd
Champ Kind- David Koechner
Brick Tamland- Steve Carell
Channel 4 news exec Ed Harken- Fred Willard
Wes Mantooth of the Channel 9 newsteam- Vince Vaughn


Cameos:
Jack Black as the biker Ron hit with a burrito
Luke Wilson as the anchorman of Channel 2 news
Tim Robbins as the anchorman of the Public News Network
Ben Stiller as the anchorman of the Spanish Language News
Seth Rogen as the "eager cameraman"


Write-up:


Introduction


Up until this movie came out, I thought Will Ferrell was an idiot.


...how's that for an introduction? :-P


Seriously, what little I saw him, his sense of humor to me was nothing but idiocy and stupidity. He was nothing but an unfunny man-child and I just didn't get the hype after him.


But when I saw the trailer of "Anchorman," I couldn't explain why but I felt like I had to see it. The idea of a movie about people in a newsroom, a comedy no less... it just looked like one of those "so crazy but just might work" sort of things.


Not that I thought it was crazy. It just looked legitimately funny. And it absolutely was.


Plot, Characters and So On


Something this insanely awesome can't really be sectioned off too much. Everything is more or less interrelated.


Ron Burgundy is THE anchorman with perfect hair, a dog named Baxter and mad jazz flute skills.


Brian Fantana does all the reporting on the streets, is a bit of a womanizer and believes that 80% of the time, his potent Sex Panther cologne works every time.


Champ Kind is an overenthusiastic sport guy who may be a tad possessive with little sense of personal boundaries.


Brick Tamland is the rarely late weatherman with an IQ of 48 who loves lamp and enjoys a good pair of slacks.


And Veronica Corningstone is the new woman [the first ever female reporter] on the block of the Channel 4 new station who soon rises to the role of co-anchor.


Before this movie, I only knew three actors.
Besides Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd (who I was happy didn't disappear with the rest of the "Clueless" cast) and Christina Appelgate (who my family knew as Kelly Bundy on "Married with Children").


David Koechner, I'd seen a couple times doing similar roles to Will Ferrell. Not terribly funny and a bit of an idiot. Including cameos on "The Office" and a small role in "Get Smart"... both are gigs he probably got because of Steve Carell.


Steve Carell


He deserves his own subheading :P
and let's just say he had me from "


This was my first ever encounter with Steve Carell and it made me a fan for life.
I'm not sure if I made this connection with him before or after my dad saw the movie and said "the weatherman is hilarious"... but either way, every one of his lines is funny because it's so idiotic but he says it with confidence.


It all began with: "Right now, it’s 82 degrees in our fair city, and compare that to 48 degrees in the upper Northwest and 38 degrees in the Middle East."


One of the most lovable idiots you'll ever find on film.
It took me a little while to find the humor in "The Office," and Michael Scott is also a bit of an idiot, but he's got a big heart and really cares about the people around him.


I'd seen plenty of Steve Carell since and [not knowing of his involvement in Comedy Central satire] I predicted he'd become a big star.


His films have been a little uneven. For every "Get Smart" and "Dinner with Schmucks," there's a "Crazy Stupid Love" (which became a complete buzzkill when we found out Emma Stone with his daughter and he wasn't okay with her dating Ryan Gosling... so quick to turn on his newest male best friend).


But nothing beats:


"I love lamp" and "LOUD NOISES!"


Back to the Story...


The Channel Four news team has been #1 in the San Diego area for what feels like forever.
Then we're introduced to the newest addition: Veronica Corningstone.


Such a testosterone embroiled workplace, it's obvious where this is going:
she's the latest conquest and all the men fail miserably.


However innocent, Brick had the best idea with his invitation to "that pants party"...
Champ did a seemingly innocent reach-around, which was insanely obvious.
Brian was the second most memorable after Brick and not in the best way: his Sex Panther cologne resulted in a hazmat chemical shower.


Then Ron did the phony workout thing where he pretends to do 100 reps on his "guns" and says his arms are tired from doing so many.
He does however get her attention with a good date where he plays jazz flute and they wind up in "Pleasure Town" when they return to his place.


However, it does not last long as Ron finds himself in a "glass case of emotion" and the studio has no choice but to have Veronica anchor in his place...


Aside from being a chauvinistic pig, the things to remember about Ron Burgundy is that the only thing he loves more than poetry and a glass of Scotch is his dog Baxter...
who gets punted off a bridge by this biker Ron hits with a burrito he carelessly throws out a window...


Yeah, this would have only worked in this movie and with Jack Black playing the biker. And in any other context, Will Ferrell in the phone booth would have just not been funny.
He's crying unintelligibly to Brian Fantana


"Bad man punted Baxter... on the bridge... I hit him with a burrito!"
Even more ridiculous, what sells it for me is when he's just crying, Brian asks him to repeat himself and he keeps doing so at a higher volume :-P hilarious every time


The end result of this entire episode is that Veronica is a hit with the ratings and the guys have no choice but to deal with the fact she's Ron's new co-anchor.


This boils to the point where the guys get in a 5-way bilingual new station brawl with the other news teams.
In other words, let the cameos fly!
Everyone from Luke Wilson to Tim Robbins to Ben Stiller show up... the only person missing is Owen Wilson, who didn't even show up in the sequel... maybe he was off doing another Wes Anderson movie :-P


Again, Brick steals the show on numerous occasions.
Before they even start fighting, we see him standing with the Channel 9 news team, laughing with them.
Everyone takes out their weapons and he has a hand grenade
("Brick where you'd get the hand grenade?" [he responds with no chance of expression] "I don't know")
When the fight breaks out, we see him waving it around, yelling, but never actually see him use it. But he does kill a dude with a trident... very randomly but hilariously.


When all the guys' schemes to get Veronica fired don't work, she pulls something of her own armed with another important bit of information:


"Ron will read ANYTHING that's on the teleprompter"... if you remember from a scene earlier on, there's a question mark in there and he pronounces it...


so... yeah, he unintentionally verbally flips off all of San Diego and is forced to resign...


For this 10 minute period, the movie is back to being Will Ferrell-grade unwatchable. The dude's miserable with a long phony beard.
Lucky for him, though, his ship comes back in when Veronica disappears in the midst of the biggest ratings grab in the San Diego news world...


Yeah, a new panda is being born at the zoo... they must really be starving for stories over there...
Ironically, that part of the storyline is 100% inaccurate. This movie takes place in the 70's and pandas didn't arrive in San Diego until 1987. Considering who's doing the writing, though, we know they're not complete geniuses.


Ron shows up to save the day and, yeah, Baxter is alive and well and arrives to save Ron and Veronica from the grizzlies. Wes Mantooth also gains the courage to tell Ron how he really feels, that as much as he dislikes him, he respects the hell out of him :P


We get a little bit of an epilogue, explaining where the news team wound up.
A couple memorable jokes is that Champ is sued for sexual harassment by Terry Bradshaw and Brick has 10 kids and is an advisor to George W. Bush... in other words, liberal Hollywood is poking fun at the Republican administration :shrug: what can you do, right?


Legacy and Sequel


I'm not entirely sure how big a hit this movie was when it first came out. I believe it was and it only gained more of a following as the years went by.
The lines hold up really well. YouTube is chock full of montages where people segued their favorite quotes and scenes together.


Anyone who didn't know the song at the time like I did also learned a little something about "Afternoon Delight" which the guys sang in a pretty darn good 4-part harmony.


News of a sequel had been on the horizon for years and last year it finally happened. To promote it, Ron Burgundy appeared in several Dodge Durango ads, released an autobiography and even got his own Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
Sadly, "Scotchy Scotch Scotch" does not contain any actual scotch... it does however contain ample swirls of BUTTERscotch. I'm not the biggest fan of the stuff, but I did try it. It wasn't bad, but Stephen Colbert's "AmeriCone Dream" still is way better 8-)


As for the sequel... well, it's hit and miss for me... mostly missing.
I had issues with it like I did with the Sherlock Holmes sequel... they tried to up the ante a little too much and it kinda blew up in their face.


Namely, the humor is a little more extreme, going for the gross-out moments or pushing the envelope in general...
Ron is 100x the idiot he was in the previous film. He and Veronica are married with a kid, but they aren't exactly the most stable family. The kid adores him despite the fact he spends zero time with him. Their relationship is tested when Veronica gets a promotion and he doesn't and they wind up separating.


Ron's follow-up job is at a SeaWorld... being a marine biology major and animal lover in general, I was embarrassed with how that scene played out...


He's proposed the idea for a 24/7 news network (kinda like CNN) and "gets the band back together." Champ owns a KFC type place (where the overwought dialogue and puns get tiresome within 5 minutes). Brian is a cat photographer (hilariously because he talks to them as if he's shooting nude models). And Brick makes a cameo where he cries his way through a eulogy AT HIS OWN FUNERAL... now that's just priceless :-P


I think the part that really lost it for me was when Ron ice skates (which I kinda didn't appreciate on the surface since I saw this a few months after the Olympics... no way he could do a quadruple toe-loop) and the rival anchor played by James Marsden causes an accident where he is blinded.


Geesh, the logic of the quadruple toe-loop held more water than that BS.


And the BS continued. Veronica nursed Ron back to health and helped rehabilitate him with the intention of getting her family back together... to the point where she hid from him that a procedure could be done to get his sight back.
Even more idiotic was her starting a cat fight with one of the girls at the news station who had been sweet on Ron. Just, why? She didn't want Ron anymore so why is it her business that he's moving on with someone else?


Probably the worst joke of a scene in the movie was when Ron met the new girlfriend's family and tried to speak all ghetto so they'd understand him. Never mind idiotic, but insensitive... makes me want to ask if Will Ferrell's black friends still talk to him.


At the finale we have the return of the news team fight, but after the first five minutes it just goes too far... Harrison Ford turns into a freaking werewolf and Kanye West (who's already one of my least favorite people in the world) says he's got an idea for Michael Jackson... :facepalm: just no...


The only good thing about the movie was the story arc where they gave Brick the perfect love interest, played by Kristen Wiig.


Coming Soon


Independence Day is next weekend and in an odd sort of way, my next movie plays into that vein.
It got some people talking politics, those who chose to read between the lines.
It got other people, me included, excited with the special effects ALONE


Even after seeing the "true" winner, I still maintain it was robbed at the Oscars in its given year...

Theatrical Review: The Lego Movie

Date: Sunday, February 9, 2014
Location: Pocono Movieplex
Time: 2:15pm
Party: 3 (mom & sister)

Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Type: animation
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh

Cast:
Emmet- Chris Patt
President Business- Will Ferrell
Wyldstyle- Elizabeth Banks
Batman- Will Arnett
Vitruvius- Morgan Freeman
Good Cop/Bad Cop- Liam Neeson
Unikitty- Alison Brie
The Astronaut- Charlie Day
Superman- Channing Tatum
Green Lantern- Jonah Hill
Wonder Woman- Cobie Smulders
Metal Beard- Nick Offerman
Finn- Jadon Sand

[Opening Remarks]

With all the big movies out right now, all the Oscar contenders, you'd think my first review of the year would be one of them...
WRONG!

My first review goes to an animated movie that as soon as I heard about it, I wrote off. My exact words were:
"They're definitely playing to a younger demographic with this one, between the animation style and the cultural references. I'm a sucker for all those things, but I doubt it's something I'd pay to go see."

Technically, my mom paid for the tickets, but I ended up eating my words. Considering how often I pick out the movie, it seemed only right to let my sister suggest this one. We are suckers for cultural references and goofy animation, after all...

Not to say that I came in with zero expectations, but what little expectations I had... the payout was two-fold.
 [Coming Attractions]

We came in a little later than we should have, so during the remainder of the "Mr. Peabody" preview, we spent most of it trying to find seats.
This was the second showing on a cold Sunday when we were expecting some snow. To which I say, never underestimate the power of kids dying to see an animated movie.

By this point, I'd grown a little tiresome of "Mr. Peabody"... DreamWorks is promoting it like crazy under the tutelage of it being a studio that released the Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda franchises... taking my resentment of the 4th Shrek movie out of the picture, they have done well with the others.
...admittedly, I'm still kinda pissed that Robert Downey Jr. pulled out of this movie because Marvel has kept him too busy to do much else. Not to mention the role went to the dude that insults oranges on the Minute Maid commercials. Yes, I know it's Ty Burrell from "Modern Family." That's just my inside joke .
On the other hand, I guess I can't be too upset. The movie looks so silly that he might have been better off.

Other previews include a teaser of the "Muppets" sequel and the Morgan Freeman narrated IMAX movie, "Island of Lemurs: Madagascar"...
When I saw the title months ago, I was afraid it was an unnecessary reboot of the DreamWorks franchise... but it looks pretty spectacular. All those years of seeing "Zoboomafoo," I had no idea lemurs actually leaped like that :-P

[Review]

Here's the tag-line that'll accompany my postings of this review on social media.
"Shut up... you had me at 'double-decker couch.'"

Seriously, that was the one joke in the first trailer that kept me completely dismissing this movie. Some ideas are just too crazy for me not to appreciate and latch onto. That's the kind of person I am.

For the record, I was a Lego kid... not in the same big way as "The Man Upstairs" (that's an actual character in the movie and I'm not gonna spoil who that is... I'll let Google take care of that), but I did do  some Legos.
Namely, there was a Christmas where I asked for a Lego pirate ship. I don't remember how much help I had with putting it together, but it took a couple months. It looked pretty awesome on our dining room table 8-)

What's kinda amazing about this movie is that it has something for all ages. You have all the bright colors and imagines for the kids. During some action sequences, it's easy to see the amazing 3D animation potential. The jokes rang from so-so to ha-ha funny to even LMAO funny (for me, there were 2-3 scenes that had me laughing that hard).
For the boys, they had an astronaut, a pirate and DC superheroes. For the girls, they had a kick-ass female character called Wyldstyle, who supposedly had issues with picking a name, and Unikitty, who lived in this chaotic realm called Cloudy Cuckoo Land.

And for the adults who got dragged to this movie by their kids, there's some interesting political commentary to take into account as well.

The movie follow everyman, Emmett, a construction worker among 1,000's who follows "the instruction" to a tee. We're led to believe he does the same thing every day because that's just the way it is in Bricksenberg.
By accident, he stumbles across "the piece of resistance," the only thing that can stop Bricksenberg president, President Business from unleashing the dreaded "Kragle" on TACO Tuesday.
(The "Kragle" is actually tube of Krazy Glue with some letters scratched out and the evil plot is encasing the Lego Universe in Krazy Glue so nobody will be able to defy the instructions again).

Emmett is then recruited by blind wizard Virtruvius and his top student, Wyldstyle to save the world. Supposedly because whoever finds "the piece of resistance" must be "The special", a Master Builder, the most important person in the universe.

But they and their allies, which include Batman and Unikitty, quickly learn he might not be the most qualified person. Apparently he'd spent his life following the instructions so well that he has nothing else going for him to set him apart. Plus the "double-decker couch" was the only original idea he could come up with... and everyone else seems to think it's the dumbest idea ever.
On the plus side, it goes make a couple appearances and actually saves their lives in one scene. After head of the Secret Police, Bad Cop sinks their ship, the only wreckage he and the micro-managers left behind was the double-decker couch... in which the heroes hid and eluded capture.

Even as a Marvel fangirl, I couldn't help but love how they used the DC superheroes in this movie. On the comedic side, we had this side-plot of Green Lantern dying to hang out with Superman, who wants nothing to do with him... and when they're captured by the bad guys, they end up in neighboring cells.
It's even funnier that their voices belong to Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, now known for their collaboration on the 21/22 Jump Street films...

Easily, the scene-stealer for me was Batman. It's interesting because he's played by Will Arnett, an actor I don't really take seriously, who plays the character in that phony deep-voice Christian Bale used to ruin the character for me... with him, it just works because this movie needed someone with a dry sense of humor.
There's also a love triangle involving him, his girlfriend Wyldstyle and Emmett... all kinds of hilarity, but the tops is the Star Wars cameo. As if it wasn't funny enough that Batman asks aloud where they'd get a hyperdrive and he gets called on it... he appears to jump ship for a couple minutes, only to come back and ruin a moment Emmett and Wyldstyle are about to have...

And just when you think you know what's going to happen, there are substantial curveballs...

[Political Commentary and (Possibly) Overthinking Things]

The commentary makes this movie out to be a statement against socialism and the utopian model... speaking out against conformity and all that. I've experienced it in "The Giver" and "Fahrenheit 451"... no matter how perfect you can make something, there's always room for anomaly and that one thing can cause a whole system to collapse. President Business spent years doing away with the Master Builders because they're individuals that create new things outside the instructions. No matter what they are, he sees them as a threat because going outside the instructions can only be perceived as chaos.

For a number of reasons, my favorite of the Lego worlds shown in the movie was the Cuckoo one. Batman might not like it ("I hate this place") and President Business did send Bad Cop to destroy it... it's crazy, but everyone was happy and it was just one big nerdgasm, something I can totally appreciate.
At the same time, the demeanor of Unikitty hints that not even that world is paradise. She spends the movie trying to stay positive, trying to keep her other emotions inside until she finally snaps. Kinda reminded me of the Amity section in the "Divergent" series... everyone is pleasant, kind and loving, but deep down their biggest flaw is that they're a little dumb in their being too trusting of other people.

Then I also got to thinking about how I think of Legos. I was never a master builder. I got as far as building that pirate ship with the instructions and I didn't feel up to doing more than that. Either because I wasn't creative enough or I was the kind of kid who preferred coloring between the lines than setting outside of them.
Nowadays, that's not quite as true, but remains an inherent flaw. Deep down, I do crave conformity because it would at least give me a place to fit in, but I have more fun when I write beyond the realm of possibility and listen to music outside the tastes of people in my age group.

[Remaining Comments]

I can't get through the rest of this without addressing the theme song.
In this conformist society, everyone does the same thing every day, everyone watches this show "Where's my Pants?" and everyone listens to the same song "Everything is Awesome!"
...based on the trailers, I was afraid it was going to be a brainwashing anthem of some kind. Instead, it became nothing more than the only song the radio plays and everyone is conditioned to never get tired of it :-P to my relief, they only played it through maybe 3-4 times throughout the entire movie. It might not catch on in household with young children the way "Let it go" has, but it still has that potential.

Taking Batman out of the equation temporarily (gotta face it, he had most of the best lines in the entire movie, lol), the biggest laugh I got out of it was when they finally let the 80's astronaut guy build his spaceship... and he proceeded to shoot everything across the realms while screaming "Spaceship!"
He was having so much fun with it, I couldn't help getting as much a kick out of it as I did :-P

In general, the cast was pretty good. It was more about the characters than the actors. Liam Neeson plays a pretty good Good Cop/Bad Cop character who actually has the two personalities... that is until President Business has his way and :gasp: erases the Good Cop face with a Q-Tip and Nail Polish remover.
Morgan Freeman is great in everything he does.

And Will Ferrell returns to play another pretty good bad guy. I enjoyed his voiceover work in "Mega-Mind"... which to me felt like it got diminished by the fact "Desipicable ME" got a sequel (an amazing sequel at that)... but he plays a pretty good baddie in this one too.
A control-freak dictator on the rise with very pronounced OCD. Seriously, only Will Ferrell could have played this guy... yet another idiot with a sense of entitlement, but yeah... coming out of the movie, I just felt bad that I didn't bother to see the "Anchorman" sequel.
If I'm lucky, my dad will see it in-flight on the way back from a trip overseas and can determine if it's worth picking up a copy... when it comes out.

Grade: B+

[Coming Soon]

#40 on my countdown:

A Universal animated film based on a true story that has a notable impact on my childhood.