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72%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #493
...out of 20,725 movies
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Ron Burgundy is San Diego's top-rated newsman in the male-dominated broadcasting of the 1970s, but that's all about to change for Ron and his cronies when an ambitious woman is hired as a new anchor.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: February 21, 2005
Our feature film for the evening tells the tale of Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), San Diego's top-rated news anchorman, and the trouble that starts to brew when Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), a female newswoman, starts to outdo him at his job. The movie is set in the good old days of the 1970's, back when women didn't do much other than make sandwiches for their man and pop out children, so of course, Veronica taking over Ron's job is a huge problem with him. With the help of his news-buddies Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steven Carell), and Champ Kind (David Koechner), Ron sets out on his journey to take back his job and keep Veronica in her place... reporting at cat fashion shows and telling the tales of the world's best meatloaf. However, his plans start to go awry when he starts to fall in love with Veronica.
What we have here is a storyline and set of characters that could have turned out to be comedy gold, but instead, we wind up with just a few good chuckles here and there. The problem, in my view, is a lack of direction for the most part. Each scene is designed to setup the next plot twist or the next turn in the story, but with the exception of that, nothing much happens. The jokes, when they're even attempted, are far below the "good comedy" level, and only manage to draw a chuckle in some of the better scenes of the film. While I realize that comedy is subjective, and what one person finds to be hilarious may be dull to the next, I find it hard to believe that anyone would find such nonsense like the flute-playing scene (five minutes of Ferrell playing a flute) to be anything more than so-so. Sure, there were some parts of that scene which were moderately amusing, but the most part, the scene just didn't work for me. The same could be said for the majority of the movie, sadly enough.
Even though it wasn't enough to save the movie, there's some good performances to be found here. Steven Carell (Brick) completely steals the show with his performance as the retard. When he pulls out some lines whilst side-by-side with the rest of the cast, it's obvious that he is just leagues above the rest with his quality and line-delivery. Sadly enough, this means that he's the guy who winds up with the least amount of screen-time amongst the main characters. Will Ferrell is decent enough as the titular Ron Burgundy, but the joke really gets old by the midway point of the film. If you've seen the trailers (and who hasn't), you'll know how he acts... it's quite amusing in a thirty-second clip, but when it goes on and on and on and on for an hour and a half, it quickly loses its charm. Then there's Christina Applegate as Ron's nemesis / love-interest Veronica. She actually pulled out a great performance here, which was one of the shockers of the film. It surely wasn't anything award-winning, but compared to the rest and coming from her, it was definitely up there in quality. We also have a number of cameo appearances, mainly Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and Jack Black. Out of the numerous cameos, Jack Black's appearance as the angry biker was by far the best of the film... so of course, yet again, he winds up with the shortest scene (though to be fair, Ben Stiller didn't get much more). It almost seems as if the director realized that these two guys (Steven Carell and Jack Black) completely dominated the stars of the movie, so he attempted to just get their lines over and get them off the set as quickly as possible.
Overall, not worthy of the rental fee. It has some mildly amusing lines and some decent scenes, but this was one of those movies that would have been better off had it been reduced to a few SNL skits. Ninety minutes was stretching the material far too thin, and it really started to show by the midway point. 4/10.
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#1:
cradle 4eva
- added February 21, 2005 at 2:30pm
i think youve been too harsh on this film. Will
Ferrell is one of the funniest actors around and
the scene where Jack Black drop kicks his dog off
a bridge almost made me wet myself
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#2:
Big D
- added April 6, 2005 at 10:42pm
EXACTLY!!! Jesus Christ man, what's your problem?
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#3:
pr0ph3t
- added November 7, 2005 at 1:15am
dude, not worth a rental fee? This movie had to be
one of the only movies I rented last year worth a
rental fee. I think we need people who actually
like these genres to be reviewing them.
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#4:
Strait Killa
- added March 30, 2006 at 1:15am
will ferrel is definitely overrated, although he
can be very funny. he just tends to overdue his
schtick often. but i don't think he does in this
movie. this is actually one of the only movies
starring will ferrell that i actually really
enjoyed. very funny film
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#5:
Tristan
- added May 16, 2006 at 9:44am
Some of the scenes in this movie were a bit too
overthetop, but alot of it was weird, dry humour,
and it was great.
9/10
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#6:
Luminaire
- added November 22, 2007 at 4:53pm
This movie was alright, i look at it as a stepping
stone for his other movies like Talladega Nights
and Blades of Glory which i found to be very
funny. 7/10
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#7:
Edd
- added April 29, 2008 at 1:41pm
Chad, why don't you go back to your home on whore
island? This movie was an instant classic. 10/10
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#8:
bluemeanie
- added April 29, 2008 at 1:54pm
Easily one of my favorite comedies EVER. I
watched it six times in theatres and still quote
it religiously. Hysterical from top to bottom.
10/10.
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#9:
Griffinheart
- added September 28, 2008 at 3:51pm
Chad, I'm going to put this out there, but you
just throw it back if you don't like it. I want
to be on you. 9+/10
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#10:
Greg Follender
- added February 22, 2010 at 9:00pm
Griffinheart,.. best... comment... ever.
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#11:
Lucid Dreams
- added June 15, 2010 at 1:55pm
This movie was damn funny, but I guess it's not
for everyone. 10/10
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#12:
Rest Easy Soul
- added July 25, 2010 at 11:01am
It was funny the first time I watched it. Then
everyone quoted it to death and then the
director's cut cut came out and ruined it. 4/10 at
best.
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