Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy Review

There is a version of this that is a real satire about 1970s broadcast news and the arrival of women in the newsroom, and that version exists for roughly the first act. Then a rival anchor team turns up carrying a trident and the film gives up on being about anything, which turns out to be the correct decision. What McKay built instead is a delivery system: a loose plot, a cast of improvisers, and enough runtime for every one of them to find something.

Will Ferrell's Ron Burgundy is a man of total confidence and no interior life whatsoever, and the commitment to that pompous baritone never wavers even as the writing goes surreal. Steve Carell's Brick is barely a character and steals the picture anyway. Christina Applegate has the hardest job in the cast, playing the only person in the room who behaves like a person, and she is far better than the material gives her credit for. The narrative is genuinely poor and the second act sags. None of it matters, because almost every line became somebody's shorthand.