In his idiotic element

The trailer for “Anchorman” has been playing in theaters for weeks now, convulsing audiences with the sight of Will Ferrell as a clueless TV news anchor, happily babbling non sequiturs while he is unaware he is actually on the air.

Not only is this sequence cut differently in the movie itself, it actually has a different meaning. Which raises the question of why trailers are often better than the movies themselves, but that’s for another day.

Ferrell, the former “Saturday Night Live” nut who hit big with last year’s “Elf,” is thoroughly in his tongue-in-cheek element with “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”

Ron Burgundy is an idiotic newsman in San Diego in the 1970s. Although he is unable to form complex thoughts and has no journalistic skill, he is the most popular anchorman in San Diego. Must be the mustache and the commanding voice.

The movie’s central joke is that Ron’s status as top dog – and his hard-partying, male chauvinistic lifestyle with his swinging Channel 4 News Team – is threatened by the arrival of female reporter Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate).

Despite his boorish behavior, Veronica falls for Ron, at least a little bit. Maybe it’s his hidden talent as a jazz flutist, one of the movie’s many opportunities for Ferrell to make a fool of himself. Ferrell, a small-eyed, big-bodied clown, is at his best with hopelessly crude pick-up lines or eccentric exclamations (“By the beard of Zeus!”).

Ferrell co-wrote the script and one of his old “SNL” writers (Adam McKay) directed it, but the movie’s not a one-man band, and the comedy is generously spread around. Burgundy’s News Team boasts a piggish sports anchor (David Koechner), a vain man-on-the-street reporter (Paul Rudd), and a weatherman (Steve Carrell, formerly of the “Daily Show”) with an I.Q. of 48. Carrell, in particular, gets some huge laughs by playing dumb.

There’s also Fred Willard and Chris Parnell as news editors, and unbilled cameo appearances by stars. Vince Vaughn has the biggest of these roles, in a recurring bit as a rival anchorman whose taunting of Burgundy leads to violence.

This sequence, the film’s weirdest and funniest, has Burgundy’s News Team facing down Vaughn and his crew in an abandoned inner-city lot. The showdown escalates into a full-scale rumble when San Diego’s other TV anchors bring their posses for a fight – even the public television guys.

Imagine our local TV news teams throwing down in a rumble with chains and knives. See? Funny.

“Anchorman” is the kind of film that climaxes with a scene of a dog speaking to a bear (subtitled, of course). You do not have to think hard about any of this.

It ought to be more rat-a-tat funny, and it never approaches the inspired highs of, let’s say, “Dodgeball.” But it’s easy to take, easy to like, and further proof that Will Ferrell is the next Jim Carrey.

Will Ferrell stars in “Anchorman.”