Probably can be viewed in retrospect as a bit of a pivot point for Adam McKay going from “dumb comedies” to “smart dumb comedies”, right? I watched this for the first time knowing the shtick and was genuinely entertained (we wanted, explicitly, a “fun dumb movie” after a few rounds of drinks.) There are a couple strokes of genius (the runner about TLC, for instance); the third act runs out of steam, as parodies tend to do. Overall, can’t really complain about what this movie was trying to do and it more or less succeeding at it.

★★★★