Originally written April 13, 2009

First of all, I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the name Judd Apatow. All I have to say is, this man is a genius. He is the producer of so many funny movies, such as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Pineapple Express. The humor in his movies is top notch. Well, this is one of his movies, and it’s simply great.

Taking place in the 1970’s, Anchorman tells us the story of Ron Burgundy (played by Will Ferrell), San Diego’s top rated news anchor. Ron Burgundy is legendary, and he is joined on the news team by three other awesome guys: Brian Fantana (played by Paul Rudd), Champ Kind (played by David Koechner), and Brick Tamland (played by Steve Carell).

These men are at the top of their game, when one day someone unexpected joins the news room…a woman. We’re introduced to Veronica Corningstone (played by Christina Applegate), an ambitious lady who is more than eye candy, who is trying to go all the way to the top. The men consider this an outrage, but they live with it anyway. However, certain events raise the conflict, and Veronica turns out to be more trouble than Ron Burgundy can handle.

It’s a very simple premise, but somehow it works so well. The movie has a self-awareness that’s genius, and so we can’t help but laugh at how idiotic the characters are acting. Most of the humor in the movie comes from how outrageous and dumb these characters are, so if you’re a fan of this kind of humor, Anchorman is one of the most effective movies at it. Most of Apatow’s films have simple plots, yet they always have a certain touch about them that makes them awesome. The comedic moments make this all so good.

The movie has an excellent cast of characters with great actors to support their roles. A lot of the people are easily recognizable faces, too, especially someone like Will Ferrell. My favorite character definitely was Brick Tamland, though, and I thought Steve Carell did so awesome with it. Spectacular performances on this one make the jokes so much more funnier.

All in all, the movie has so many funny moments that make it worth watching. It might not be one of Apatow’s best films on a technical level, but it winds up being one of my all-time favorites of his because of the level of comedic gold that’s in it. A lot of the humor is meant to be stupid humor, but it works so well that you really can’t help but laugh. If anything, it’s worth watching for Steve Carell’s character, trust me. I quote this movie way more than I should, and it’s only gotten better for me over the years.

5/5 

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I originally wrote this review over 10 years ago, so forgive my more amateur writing style of the time. I found some things that I disagreed with in my original review, so this is actually a revised version of that. I normally don’t like to alter my past reviews unless I feel differently about it. When I first wrote this review, though, I only gave the movie a 4/5, and since then it’s actually become one of my favorite comedies of all time, so I updated my score of it and revised the review to reflect my thoughts accordingly. Something like 80-90% of this review is still my original writing from 2009, but I did adjust some things to reflect how much more I love this movie now.