Adam McKay knows how to give comic actors room, though he is less reliable at knowing when to move on. We prefer Anchorman’s indulgent silliness to the insistent explanations of his later satires.
Fi1m perspective
In Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Will Ferrell's newsreader takes himself seriously, and McKay is happy to let him carry on. A female co-anchor's arrival in a 1970s newsroom gives the director and his co-writer Ferrell the makings of a workplace satire. They spend much of the film letting the men be ridiculous instead. We like the result, with reservations about how long some of the jokes are allowed to run.
The partnership with Ferrell ran through a series of comedies from 2004 to 2013, before The Big Short (2015) marked a turn towards satirical drama. McKay's fourth-wall breaks, celebrity explainers and on-screen captions offer ways into difficult subjects such as finance. There is a useful ambition in making that material understandable. But Vice (2018) makes the explanatory devices too conspicuous, while Don't Look Up (2021) presses its satire too insistently. We prefer him when he allows the actors to do more of the explaining.
In Anchorman, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner suit his willingness to let a scene wander. They can justify the extra minute even when the story has stopped moving. We laughed at Carell's nonsense because he makes it sound so unremarkable. Christina Applegate gives the comedy useful resistance as Veronica Corningstone, remaining credible among men who scarcely resemble working adults. The writing gives her less freedom to be strange, though, and McKay puts more effort into giving the men something funny to do than developing the workplace satire.
Editor Brent White has to find a shape for all this without removing the detours that make it funny. The joins show, and some scenes continue beyond their funniest line. McKay and Ferrell also return to male alarm at female competence after the joke has become predictable. We would happily lose some of that repetition without asking for a comedy that tidied away the cast's oddness. Start with Anchorman for McKay's handling of actors, provided a wandering plot is an acceptable price for an evening with this company.
Biography
Adam McKay is an American filmmaker, screenwriter and director. He served as head writer on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2001.
After leaving SNL, McKay collaborated with comedian Will Ferrell on a series of comedy films, directing and co-writing Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008) and The Other Guys (2010). He directed the pilot episode of the HBO series Succession (2018).
McKay later directed the satirical films The Big Short (2015), Vice (2018) and Don't Look Up (2021). He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Big Short. In 2019 he founded the production company Hyperobject Industries.
