Grade:  D+

Director:  Adam McKay		Released:  July 2004
Writer:  Will Ferrell, Adam McKay		MPAA Rating:  PG-13
Players:  Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Steve Carell		Running time:  94 minutes

Ratings Methodology

If this is the best Will Farrell can do, he'll be going the way of Chevy Chase very soon.  Five years from now he'll be starring in Elf Lives and Old School Vacation.

Seriously, this movie is not funny.  It's an exercise in patience to sit through.  The only part that made me chuckle was when Jack Black punted a dog off a bridge.  Oh, the picture is full of celebrity cameos, because the filmmakers seem to think that the mere presence of celebrities will create laughter.  No need to write a funny script when you can simply have your celebrities and stars improvising all over the place, stabbing in the dark, hoping to hit some comedy.

Here's a representative joke from Anchorman.  A guy who thinks he's smooth with the ladies splashes on some expensive, foreign cologne in an attempt to hit on the new anchorwoman.  The joke is that the cologne smells awful.  He walks into the office, permeating the place with his stench.  Everyone evacuates the office because it smells so bad.  Ha ha.

I scoured the internet in search of critics who think this movie is funny.  Particularly looking for specific jokes or scenes that they think are funny, wondering if they could convince me of the humor.  Mission: unaccomplished.  The bits which critics are pointing out as funny just aren't.  This movie sucks.  Everybody is working really, really hard to be funny.  A little too hard.  Resulting in jokes that are a little too obvious.

- crocoPuffs