Achorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

A look at how the 2004 film Anchorman highlights Hollywood's problem with comedy.

Let's face it, most Hollywood "comedies" aren't very funny. This is especially true if they star a former Saturday Night Live alumnus. Long gone are the days when SNL cast members on the big screen might mean a movies like The Blues Brothers, Beverly Hills Cop, or Ghostbusters. Replaced by the likes of The Love Guru, The Waterboy, or Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Even worse if it's the full two hour treatment of an actual SNL sketch that wasn't funny enough to sustain five minutes on TV (for example It's Pat the Movie, or Stuart Saves His Family).

And so we come to the tragedy that is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - the trouble here is not that it can be listed among the least funny Hollywood comedies of the past twenty years, but that it can be listed among the most funny ones. Aside from the rare oddball like Office Space or The Big Lebowski, laugh out loud studio films are hard to come by. Hollywood seldom makes comedies as funny as Anchorman, and that's the rub because Anchorman just isn't that funny; it has perhaps a chuckle here and there, but chances are all but the most indiscriminate of viewers will be rolling their eyes rather than rolling in the aisles.

It's not worth recapping the plot here - it's actually a time-tested concept. Huge ego male anchorman in the male-dominated world of nightly news must get used to new female reporter. True, the material has been mined to death from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Murphy Brown,  but are there really ever any dead horses when it comes to comedy?

And don't believe the "Unrated, Uncut, & Uncalled For!" label on the DVD version either. Despite that, and the warning of nudity at the beginning, there really isn't any aside from Christina Applegate's side boob when she's wearing an apron. Like everything else about this movie there's a lot of hype, but not a lot to justify it.