Ron Burgundy, the hair-obsessed prima donna TV newsman played by Will Ferrell in “Anchorman,” could be the most eye- dabbingly hilarious movie caricature since Pee-Wee Herman. Never will a talking head so make you want to laugh yours off.

Take heart, this assessment does not come from some card-carrying Will Ferrell superfan. Truth be told, I've never been all that hot on the big doofus. His shenanigans on “Saturday Night Live” usually left me cold (sadly, I no longer find male cheerleaders amusing) and his starring role in “Elf” was perhaps the single most grating film performance of last year. On the other hand, he was brilliant in “Old School,” playing the once-responsible suburban husband who heeds the call of the keg.

Burgundy outstrips even that arse-baring buffoon in the comical daftness department. Set in the swinging 1970s — “a time before cable, when the anchorman reigned supreme” — the movie chronicles the rise and fall and rise again of Burgundy, a swaggering, sexist San Diego newsman whose top-rated, all-male Action News Team prowls the sunny streets of Panda City like some adolescent greaser gang, albeit one attired in plaid and pastel sports jackets.

One of the great feats of the movie — co-written by Ferrell and first-time director Adam McKay — is how it makes male chauvinism seem, well, almost quaint. Burgundy and his buddies (including riotous “Daily Show” regular Steven Carell as Brick Tamland, the village idiot weather guy, and a surprisingly funny Paul Rudd as the station's sleazy “man on the street”) aren't just lazy and entitled; they're dumb. Told by his boss (Fred Willard) that the station is looking to diversify its news staff, Ron cluelessly defines the word “diversity” as an “old, old wooden ship used during the Civil War era.”

Still, beneath his super-smarmy, butt-pinching veneer, Burgundy is mortal like the rest of us, a soul plagued by doubt and loneliness who lives alone with his dog and just wants to be loved. Tragically, the anchorman is so distorted by sexual privilege that he has no idea how to express his feelings honestly. “I don't know how to say this,” he ventures, trying to put the moves on Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), the station's ambitious new female reporter, “but I'm pretty important.”

Though initially repulsed by Burgundy and his bush league courtship tactics — at one point, she finds him shirtless in his office, pumping iron — Veronica soon warms to his essentially vulnerable nature. That, and the fact that he plays a smoking jazz flute, yielding a scene so exquisitely silly, it sent a recent promotional audience into conniptions.

Look, we're not talking “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” here. The love affair between Burgundy and Corningstone is insipid, yes, but it provides a nice launching point for their inevitable battle of the sexes. Smarter and more driven, Corningstone claims a spot on Burgundy's treasured anchor desk, touching off a tit-for-tat that culminates with his firing. Not to worry: Redemption is just around the corner for Ron in the biggest news story ever to hit San Diego, something to do with a pregnant panda.

The zaniness hits full-stride during a back alley rumble pitting rival San Diego news teams against one another in a scene cribbed from “West Side Story.” It sounds stupid. It is stupid. But with cameos by Ben Stiller, Tim Robbins and Vince Vaughn — each wielding deadly weapons and ridiculous ’70s wigs — it's so very hard not to enjoy Ferrell's vision of blessed newsanchor anarchy.

Ferrell claims he cobbled together Burgundy from several local affiliate newscasters he remembers from his Southern California upbringing, but off-TV-camera, the newsmaker is really the same Peter Pan character he always plays: the simple- minded, tantrum-throwing manchild. Burgundy finds himself amusing, and as his billboard says: “If Ron Burgundy says it, it's true.”

Anchorman
Starring: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd
Rating: PG-13 (sexual humor, profanity and comic violence)
Running time: 91 min.
Grade: B+