Day Twenty-Nine: Anchorman

This morning, back in my apartment as news about last night's riots came in and rain drizzled outside, all I wanted to do was huddle under a blanket and watch Anchorman. It's the perfect movie to lie back and enjoy mindlessly, cracking up at the countless hilarious lines that have become classic to college boys since it came out. Sure, it's dumb, but it's well done. It's genuinely hilarious and has a fairly unique plot. Its random absurdity makes it more than just another series of sexist, racist, homophobic jokes, partly because it makes fun of the kind of dimwitted, chauvinist guys who laugh at that stuff.

I didn't always love Anchorman. When I first saw it with my dad and sister, all three of us hated it. When I was in high school, we would spend lazy Sunday afternoons at the North Towne theater, a musty basement complex that showed late-run movies for a dollar. It's now defunct--my hometown once had five theaters and now only has two huge, identical multiplexes--and although I hadn't been there in two or three years, I miss it. I saw the re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs there as a little kid, and I saw my first PG-13 movie there: Batman and Robin, which we actually left early because my mom accidentally sat in a seat without a back and fell and hurt herself. Though I love my place of employment, Showplace 16, and I've worked there long enough for it to learn its quirks, there's still nothing like seeing a movie in a crappy dollar theater.

Anyway, my dad and sister and I would drive across town to catch matinees almost every Sunday, and we always saw the most terrible movies--the ones we wouldn't pay full price for but didn't mind seeing cheaply. Anchorman was by no means the worst of the bunch, but for some reason we all despised it. I remember thinking it was stupid and boring. Four or five years later, I'm not sure why. Maybe I just hadn't yet developed the sense of humor that now allows me to crack up at lines like "I know what you're thinking, and the answer is yes. I have a nickname for my penis." I still do this occasionally, but I used to be especially bad about hating something just because dumb guys liked it and latching onto that hatred with ferocity. In elementary school, I yelled at boys for being too obsessed with their Game Boys and yo-yos; in high school, I glared and shook my head when my guy friends quoted Anchorman or South Park. Then one night freshman year, I got sucked into watching it one weekend night with other kids on my floor, and found it hilarious. And watching it three or four times since then, I find that it just gets funnier every time. The classic lines actually get better with familiarity. I may turn up my nose and watch foreign films and acclaimed independents, but I'm as susceptible to ridiculous humor as the next person. I'm in a glass case of emoootiiooonnn!