Anchorman is equally flimsy and hilarious—a point brought home up-roariously in the deluxe DVD set. On the second disc, the director, Adam McKay, has put together a whole alternate feature, Wake Up Ron Burgundy, that promises “the Adventure Continues,” but actually replays the first adventure with mostly edited-out scenes, including an entire subplot about an SLA-like radical terror group called the Alarm Clock. It would have been a disaster to see every point made twice in a theater. But it’s a treat to see this Bizarro retread in the comfort of one’s home, especially when Amy Pohler as a bank teller and Maya Rudolph as an Alarm Clock firebrand rank each out during an aborted robbery. And, of course, there’s more Will Ferrell.
      As the hero of Anchorman, 1970s San Diego TV-news star Ron Burgundy, he’s a narcissist with a heart almost as big as his head. Like Ferrell’s other great characters (notably Frank the Tank in Old School), he isn’t exactly empty. His problem is that his emotions twitter an inch under the skin, so he gets easily roused, then bollixed. Burgundy is perfect for Ferrell: a fellow who can’t function unless he pours all his energy into his surface presentation. He wears jewelry adorned with the station insignia; he keeps his hair (including mustache) freshly styled; and when depression hits he goes clothes shopping. He’s not just fatuous, he’s luxuriantly fatuous, parading his beer belly as if it were six-pack abs. Ferrell has no vanity—maybe that’s why he’s peerless at portraying men who are all vanity (like Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton). He makes Burgundy’s obliviousness startling funny. It’s hard for Burgundy to recognize what’s happening right in front of his nose when his nose is buried in a Scotch glass and status and sex are so distracting. If you’re Ron Burgundy, it’s impossible to respond to an acquaintance’s divorce woes with anything but a cheerful “fantastic” as you circulate around a pool.
      At the start of Anchorman (the actual theatrical movie), Burgundy has the love of all San Diego (though he thinks that Germans named the city in 1904). And he has a posse to cover his often-exposed back: roving reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and sports reporter Champ King (David Koechner). So he can’t contain himself when management brings in a female reporter, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), and breaks up his macho magic kingdom. He and his cronies protest Veronica’s hiring to their boss, Ed Harken (Fred Willard), then haze her with come-ons from a time when crudeness could still be considered Neanderthal vitality. Yet when Burgundy succeeds in bedding her thanks to his virtuosity on the jazz flute, he falls in love—and, on the air (this boy can’t help it!), tells all San Diego of their mating dance. It isn’t until their ambitions collide and they become reluctant co-anchors that their battle of the sexes turns into total war.
      Director McKay fills the cast with slaphappy farceurs. Rudd deftly parodies the cocky lady-killer side of the Reynolds-era male mystique; Koechner nails its good-ole-boy (and homoerotic) side. Applegate shows she’s got comedic game by putting her best foot forward, then stumbling on it. The scene-stealer is Carell, who never wavers from the brilliant shtick of playing an idiot-savant weatherman as if he really doesn’t know how to exploit any of his 48 I.Q. points. His scarily bright blank stare bespeaks his inability to process the simplest incident. Even in a two-sided rumble, he’s apt to switch sides. And his urgent verbal delivery glistens with flop sweat. It’s worth a ticket to watch Carell smile nervously and vacantly when he approaches Veronica with a garbled sexual invitation and another guy has to figure it out. “I don’t know what we’re yelling about!” Carell’s Brick screams, sincerely, when Ron and his crew argue with their producer (Willard) that “the word is anchorman, not anchorlady!”
      To discover why movie fans are screaming for more Will Ferrell, and to savor the work of improv wizards like Carell, buy or rent Anchorman. Bill Clinton may feel your pain, but no one feels his own pain better than Ferrell. Dreamworks’ transfer is first-rate, visually and audibly. Michael Sragow

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