MARKED MOVIES

Director: Adam McKay.
Screenplay: Will Ferrell, Adam McKay.
Starring: Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Christina Applegate, David Koechner, Fred Willard, Holmes Osbourne, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, Danny Trejo, Luke Wilson, Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Tim Robbins.

Am I missing something about Will Ferrell? Granted, he was actually quite funny in “Elf” and his cameo in “Starsky & Hutch” was a hoot but really his humour is extremely childish and bottom of the barrel stuff.

In San Diego in the 1970’s, there is only one newsman with any clout and that’s Ron Burgandy (Ferrell). That is, until an ambitious young up-start arrives and threatens Ron’s perfect world. What’s worse is…she’s a woman. Ron being a bit of a male chauvinist not only sees this as a threat to his job security but also a threat to his manhood and enters into a battle of the sexes to keep his job and keep the male camaraderie in the workplace.

This film has a faithful following and lots of people seem to adore it but I didn’t find it funny at all. All the gags – if you can even call them gags – are forced and lazily written. I’m no comedian but I throw away better jokes than Ferrell’s on a daily basis. In it’s favour, it has a wonderful cast who all seem to be having fun and delivering fine comedic performances but its a shame they have no material to work with. Nice shows from Steve Carell and Paul Rudd and Ferrell’s Burgandy is also a good character with loads of potential but the jokes just don’t fly and it seems as if everyone is making it up as they go along. Maybe they were and maybe that’s the whole point but then maybe it’s simply just… shit.

A real insult to call itself a comedy. There is one joke that this film has and that’s the film itself.

Mark Walker

This entry was posted on January 15, 2012 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Comedy with tags 2004. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.