Critical response
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy received generally positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 66% based on 202 reviews, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Filled with inspired silliness and quotable lines, Anchorman isn't the most consistent comedy in the world, but Will Ferrell's buffoonish central performance helps keep this portrait of a clueless newsman from going off the rails." Another review aggregation website, Metacritic, assigned a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 38 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
The film is now considered by many to be one of the best comedy films of the 2000s. Empire magazine ranked Ron Burgundy #26 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll. Empire also ranked Anchorman at number 113 in their poll of the 500 Greatest Films Ever. Entertainment Weekly ranked Burgundy #40 in their "The 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years" poll and Ferrell said, "He is my favorite character I've played, if I have to choose one ... Looking back, that makes it the most satisfying thing I've ever done".
Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, saying, "Proving that even infantile humor can be funny, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy does make you laugh even if you hate yourself for doing so." Brian Lowry of Variety gave the film a positive review, saying, "Ferrell has seized on a clever concept rife with possibilities – namely, women breaking the glass ceiling in male-dominated TV news during the '70s – and smartly surrounded himself with a topnotch cast." Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, saying, "Tightly directed by newcomer Adam McKay, a former head writer on Saturday Night Live who cooked up the screenplay with Ferrell, Anchorman never reaches the sublime heights of that modern comedy classic There's Something About Mary. Big deal—it's a hoot nonetheless and the scaled-down aspirations seem smart". Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "That he can make his anchorman chauvinistic, deluded and ridiculous but still manage to give him some humanity is testimony to Ferrell's comic talents". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C+, saying, "Yet for a comedy set during the formative era of happy-talk news, Anchorman doesn't do enough to tweak the on-camera phoniness of dum-dum local journalism". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "If you sense the presence of recycled jokes from Animal House onward, you'd be right. But you'd be wrong to discount the comic rapport Ferrell has with his cohorts, notably the priceless Fred Willard as the harried station manager". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "Most of the time... Anchorman works, and a lot of the time it's very funny".
James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "Ferrell carries the movie on his broad shoulders, nailing the character perfectly." Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying, "It's a cute, silly, likable movie without much weight or intensity, but it's also pretty funny." Ella Taylor of L.A. Weekly gave the film a negative review, saying, "It's a long string of heavy-footed sight and sound gags that must have seemed a stitch at the drawing board, but made me squirm in my seat." Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "For every gag that works, there's one that doesn't, and the story is too thin to keep us engaged otherwise." Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press gave the film two out of four stars, saying, "Little more than an extended Saturday Night Live skit with better wigs, real locations and a script that sputters as soon as its one-joke premise is exhausted." Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald gave the film two out of four stars, saying, "It's a flat, dull picture marked by sporadic flashes of ridiculous brilliance." A.O. Scott of The New York Times gave the film three out of five stars, saying, "It is not as maniacally uninhibited as Old School or as dementedly lovable as Elf, but its cheerful dumbness is hard to resist." Stephen Cole of The Globe and Mail gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, saying, "Knights of Columbus! Wouldn't it be great if TV-based comedians weren't afraid of making movies that were funnier than they are?" Geoff Pevere of the Toronto Star gave the film two out of five stars, saying, "Like most of these sofa-spud comedies, Anchorman bears its attention-deficit disorder proudly, as it shifts tone and abruptly sidetracks."
Ty Burr of The Boston Globe gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, saying, "Sloppy, crude, pursuing the most far-flung tangents in hopes of a laugh, Anchorman still gave me more stupid giggles than I'd care to admit if I weren't paid to." Michael Booth of The Denver Post gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying, "Always affectionate toward its people, especially when they are at their most ridiculous, Anchorman meticulously builds America's dimmest news team. And we root for them." Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "As much credit as Ferrell deserves for keeping this nonsense from slipping off the screen, Applegate deserves as well." Megan Lehmann of the New York Post gave the film two out of four stars, saying, "Ferrell is funny spouting his weird stream-of-consciousness rants, but too often the plot leaves him hanging and he resorts to just Yelling Really Loud." Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film two out of five stars, saying, "Most of it isn't even as funny as those supposedly humorous features that local news broadcasts sometimes end with." Joe Baltake of The Sacramento Bee gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "There isn't a second that goes by without Ferrell filling it with some form of comic shtick – a well-turned punch line, a goofy facial expression, a pratfall or some other kind of physical comedy business." Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times gave the film two out of four stars, saying, "While the film is sporadically funny, it was done much better on the small screen, decades ago." Anna Smith of Time Out gave the film a positive review, saying, "Takes a joke and runs with it – sometimes too far, but usually long enough to wear you down and force you to submit to its craziness."
