Having romped around the harmlessly inane world of local television news in the original, well-coiffed anchorman Ron Burgundy & Co. (Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, David Koechner, and Paul Rudd) enter a world that is much more serious and in much more need of lampooning: the nightmare of infotainment, pandering, and …
Promising comic premise -- a swinging single San Diego newsman in the Seventies, and his personal attraction but professional resistance to a female colleague -- subjected to a strategy of anything-for-a-laugh: wild exaggeration, improbability, impossibility, fantasy, absurdity, ribaldry, animal abuse, cartoon interlude, musical numbers, celebrity cameos (Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, …
The enlistment of Nora Ephron, director and (with her sister Delia) cowriter, assures a level of smartness unexpected in a transplant from the small screen to the big. Not at all a reasonable facsimile of the Sixties sitcom about the witchy housewife with the twitchy nose, it is rather a …
Competitive figure skating gets the Will Ferrell treatment: rough and rude. Banned for life from the men's division, two bitter rivals (the macho Ferrell, the femme Jon Heder) return to the ice through a loophole as the first-ever male pair. The main source of humor is your presumed nervousness about …
For anyone who heretofore hadn't encountered the character on HBO, Borat Sagdiyev will need an introduction. He is one of the personas of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Da Ali G Show, a Kazakh TV reporter dapperly dressed in a dove-gray suit, bristlingly mustachioed, blissfully sexist, superstitiously anti-Semitic, and …
A pair of CEOs (Zach Galifianakis and Jason Sudeikis) see an opportunity to oust a long-seated North Carolina congressman (Will Ferrell) when he commits a major public gaffe before an upcoming election.
Will Ferrell deadpans his performance in a semi sendup of Spanish telenovelas (yes, it’s in Spanish), and his unwinking commitment to the role makes all the surrounding silliness enjoyable. It’s all there: florid themes, cheap production values, goofy technique, hack dialogue, and awesome ranchero ballads. The weakest stuff is the …
Juvenile monkeyshines, scrimpingly animated, monopolistically voiced by Will Ferrell as the primate's adopted human, and accompanied by a posy of insipid songs. Based on the books by Margret and H.A. Rey; directed by Matthew O'Callaghan.
“Edgy” indie comedy by the brothers Jay and Mark Duplass (“mumblecore” movers and shakers, makers of Baghead among others), the premise of which would be just as easy to imagine as a mainstream Will Ferrell vehicle: an oafish divorced lonelyheart (“I’m like Shrek”) thinks he may have found a new …
Will Ferrell plays his standard issue wide-eyed naif, an amiable simp who can find the good in just about any situation, save one: the sudden reappearance of his wife’s guilt-stricken greaser ex (Mark Wahlberg), eager to reheat a dead romantic soufflé. Two moments stand out in this battle between alpha …
Leo! JLaw! La Meryl! Great Cate! Sweet Tea Timothée! Riri! Madea! A former Will Ferrell gag writer handling the rudder! Even the biggest of screens can barely withstand the star power. With Spidey continuing to draw record numbers, lets see how many screens your local multiplex will free up for …
A conventional, imitative, unimaginative, unadventurous dark comedy concerning the multiple suspects in the suspicious death of the most despised woman in Verplanck, N.Y. Dark comedies are not what they used to be. They are much nearer the middle of the road. (Once again the cliché of the canine casualty: run …