Before I get down to the business at hand, which has nothing to do with business or hands, oddly enough, I'd like to do a typical blog thing and tell you about my day.
It started out really, really bad. I woke up. After shrugging that disappointment off, I ate some breakfast and some other stuff happened and then I went hiking with my son. It was possibly one of the nicest times he and I have spent together. No one complained about stupid things (which is what Jack usually does) and no one got impatient and angry about stupid things (which is what I usually do). The weather was very Autumnal and the sun was doing that beautiful slanting-shafts-of-light thing it does in the fall. We had walking sticks and I had a big knife strapped to my hip and we yelled at some ducks... This is what being a dad is all about.
Now to the stuff...
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) R
Now, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not a huge Will Ferrell fan. He's funny enough, but he takes roles that are poorly written in movies that are poorly directed. In my opinion he has about four movies under his belt that I would suggest wasting your time on, and they are Elf (2003), Anchorman (2004), Stranger Than Fiction (2006), and... that's it. Okay three movies.
But Anchorman is pretty stinkin' funny. It's about San Diego's number one news anchor, Ron Burgundy (who has some interesting insight on San Diego's history). The year is... vague-ish. Sometime in one of the polyester decades. Anyway, Ron and his buddies (played by Paul Rudd (who is hilarious), Steve Carell (who steals nearly every scene he's in by uttering infamous lines like "I love lamp,") and Todd Packer (who I don't like enough to look up his real name)) are local celebrities and pretty much have the run of the town. Everyone loves them and life couldn't be better. Enter Veronica Corningstone (played by Christina Applegate (played by Kelly Bundy)), a no-nonsense news anchor who refuses to allow her male coworkers to sexually discriminate against or harass or proposition... her. (All of the above parentheses make this hard to follow as I write. I apologize for any confusion and suggest you just skip to the next review.)
Will Ferrell was born for this role. He delivers his lines with an almost eerie understanding of Ron Burgundy's shallowness and thickheadedness (which is totally a word). For example:
Ron Burgundy (looking at himself in the mirror): "I look good. I look real good. HEY! EVERYONE! COME SEE HOW GOOD I LOOK!"
So, watch it with three of your closest friends. If you watch it by yourself you'll wonder if you're missing something.
And then watch this movie: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) PG
One of my closest, least "prone to use hyperbole when discussing a movie" friends and I have come to an agreement that this movie may just be the funniest animated movie of all time. Funnier even than Schindler's List, if you can believe it.
If you loved the book as a child, don't worry. The movie is nothing like it. Amateur inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) invents a machine that will turn water into food. But through a very subtle mishap ("subtle" being completely the wrong word to use) the machine ends up in the stratosphere and begins raining food down on the town below.
If you love sardines, political corruption, childhood celebrities trying pathetically to hold on to the glory of their past, monkey thought translators, not-so-secret science labs, humongous food, Mr. T, the biggest unibrow I've ever seen, jokes uttered with every breath and implied in-between, indestructible, spray-on footwear, and teeny-tiny splash zones, you'll really appreciate this movie.
Thank you,
Matt Beers
we agree wholeheartedly that "Stranger Than Fiction" may have been one of his finest....but no nod to "Stepbrothers"?
ReplyDeleteStepbrothers was... I'd rather not go into it here, but I felt that if I'd gone through and edited all of the funny parts into one clip, it would have been a half-hour short film that wouldn't have made sense to anyone. It was a little too crude at certain parts for my taste. I like offensive and foul, but some people use it as a crutch and that just really pushes me away.
ReplyDeleteFYI - I have a post planned to review Cloudy with a Chance, but won't actually write it for a few more days... and there's a twist. I'm calling it "Cloudy With a Chance of Swedish Meatballs." It's a review of the movie combined with my opinions on Ikea. Should be interesting... watch it for sometime around next weekend.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the nod, by the way.