Media satire serves up laughs in ‘Anchorman’

In theaters

ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, Directed by Adam McKay, written by Will Ferrell and McKay, 91 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Will Ferrell comedy, “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” is a crude, funny satire that tackles local television anchors and their newscasts.

Those are easy targets to skewer, but not unlike “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Murphy Brown” or “Broadcast News,” the movie is broad and harmless, mining more truth from its subject than some in the biz will want to admit.

As directed by Adam McKay from a script he co-wrote with Ferrell, “Anchorman” is essentially 91 minutes of good-natured hair pulling, which is especially cheeky since the group getting its hair pulled would rather not have theirs touched, thank you very much.

Corrosive but never mean, the movie only exists to have a good time. It’s set in the early 1970s, when the feminist movement was an unpleasant notion for some, cable TV was in its infancy, and local newscasts had the sort of prominence that comes with less competition. McKay and Ferrell poke fun at the times and the characters, but they also counter with an affection for both that’s almost sweet.

In the film, Ferrell is Ron Burgundy, the enormously popular, hirsute television anchor for San Diego’s Channel 4 who loves his scotch and his lady friends almost as much as he loves being No. 1 in the ratings.

Burgundy is a big local star and he knows it. He’s the man, the one to watch, the “handsome beast” people trust at the end of the day to give them the news. Sure he’s an idiot. But people like his macho bluster, and they especially like the way he ends each newscast: “Stay classy, San Diego.”

When station manager Ed Harken (Fred Willard) hires reporter Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) to add diversity to the newsroom, Ron has a short-lived affair with her before being slapped with a reality check.

Sharp, savvy Veronica has anchor dreams of her own. When Ron goes missing one night, Veronica fights to fill in for him as anchor, the ratings soar, and she gets promoted to co-anchor as a result.

Forced to admit he might have met his match in a woman, chauvinist Ron decides to fight back with the help of his bumbling news team: closeted gay sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner), dim-witted weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and investigative reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd). Needless to say, complications ensue.

Running throughout “Anchorman” is an element of surprise that gives the movie the raw energy of standup comedy.

The movie isn’t static, but alive. It’s dumb but in a smart way. There’s thought behind the jokes, life to the performances. Several unexpected cameos flip the film on its side, particularly when the competing local affiliates come together to settle old grudges and heal bruised egos over a bloody brawl. With the characters wielding instruments of death in an effort to silence their competition, the scene is a standout, proving the most honest hallucination to hit theaters this year.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 113 minutes, rated R.

At the start of “The Butterfly Effect,” audiences are given a brief, punchy primer in chaos theory. They’re reminded that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, all sorts of chaos can unfold upon the world, with typhoons, hurricanes and the like laying waste to the earth thanks to those seemingly inconsequential butterfly breezes.

It’s fitting, then, that by the end of “The Butterfly Effect,” audiences are reminded of another kind of calamity. If a couple of talentless hacks get the green light to make a movie in Hollywood, all of their mindless scribblings can have a similarly disastrous effect with the world being laid flat by a typhoon of the cinematic variety.

That’s just the case in “The Butterfly Effect,” a lurid movie from Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber whose time-traveling story of pedophilia, child pornography, madness and prostitution is mere exploitation for the sake of exploitation.

The film stars Ashton Kutcher as Evan, a college student who tries to correct his troubled past by traveling back in time to alter unhappy events that occurred in his youth. The problem is that Evan can’t seem to keep this self-meddling from making things worse with the film becoming increasingly absurd as it unfolds.

Movies like “The Butterfly Effect” don’t want to entertain as much as they want to shock. As such, they’re Hollywood at its worst and most cynical. At my screening last spring, I longed to join the handful of people who had the good sense to walk out, but each time the pull of leaving hit me, a whole new low was achieved onscreen, and with it, a reason to stay.

Grade: F

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.