I have many very important leather-bound books, and my apartment smells of rich mahogany

...And so we are graced by the presence of legend- Ron Burgundy.  What an amazingly great movie.  Satirical yet sophomoric, sophisticated yet silly, it is an amazing blend of over the top humor that has come out of the "Frat Pack's" archives and a throwback to some of the great comedy satires of all time. 

In lieu of a movie review (there are plenty out there), I just want to list some of the things that I found brilliant.  To me, this was not so much a movie in the vein of "Dodgeball" but is more reminiscent of the great satires "Spinal Tap" and "Blazing Saddles."  In fact, I see many similarities between "Anchorman" and Mel Brooks' classic western.  Both deal with stereotypes (white vs. black, men vs. women); both are funny because they take themselves so seriously with a few intermittent over the top gratuities (horse getting taken to the gallows with a convicted man, Brick Tamland riding 'bear-back'); classic breakout in song ("I get no kick from champagne," "Sky rockets in flight, afternoon delight"); and a stupendous breakout brawl (Blazing Saddles crashes the Hollywood party with full fledged pie fight, area anchormen have a "Gangs of New York" style showdown for local news supremacy). 

The names given to the characters are absolutely priceless- my personal favorite was Wes Mantooth.

What makes this a future must-own DVD is that apparently 80% of this movie was ad-libbed.  They have approximately 11 hours worth of film that they shot, so they could basically release a second movie.  Can't wait to see the extras.

As an added bonus, you can go here to see the music video for "Afternoon Delight."

The best thing for me though is that Will Farrell is proving to be much more than a slap-stick humor guy.  He's got a level of sophistication to him that should carry him forward for many years to come, and for that I am thankful, and I can't wait to see him show up in the future biography of Tenacious D, "The Pick of Destiny."  But to me he'll always first be Gene the "more cowbell" guy, and that's not such a bad thing either.