[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Friendly Competition, a podcast to discover the best of all time. I'm Nick Carey alongside my coast and best friend, Cody Lena. Discuss various pop culture topics and narrow it down to truly the best of all time.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Or as we like to call it, the boat. But more gets a foot on the boat. We put them in a sweet 16 style tournament, argue each round till we decide a winner. Nick, what kind of kidney reason? We decide who steps put on the boat.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Whatever the hell we want. Cody, you want to tell them what we're talking about this season?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. We are talking about a man who towers over most other men. Not actually, probably six three. He's a big man. We're talking about from the cinematic universe, Hollywood's leading man, the it man. In Hollywood, everyone sees him and they say, pratt Pitt, you're a bitch. We don't care about you, Susan Strand. And get the fuck out of here. We want a good actor and they get Will Ferrell.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Were you worried that Susan Sarandon was coming for all of those leading man roles? Yeah, dude, she's been. She's out here. She's been trying.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Have you seen her act? She's beyond gender. She's great.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: I like.
And this is on me, and I got to do the work on myself. I never saw her as a leading man type, but like I said, that's on me. That's got to be something I got to work through and deal with.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I think she has got it in her. She could do whatever she wanted. Yeah.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Hey, Cody, real quick, because I'm looking at you looking at a screen. Hey, can you name any of the Susan Strandon movies?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah, of course.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: On that. Could you look me in my eyes and tell me.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I could.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: One Susan Strandon movie.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Just right in my eyes.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Thelma Louise, for sure.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Yep. Okay, two more.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Classic. Classic. Look me in the many. She was in the Rocky horror picture show as we. Everyone remembers that one.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: That one, yeah. Anything else?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: James of the giant Peach. She was a voice in James.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: That's how you know someone's cheating is when they start naming animated films.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: You're like sisters of it.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: James of the.
Wait, wait. Oh, there is a live action element to James and the giant peaches.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: So why don't you get off my fucking dude?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
I don't know why I helped you. I don't know why I should have made you have to say that part.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know why I'm doing. Trying to help you.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Why would.
Man. Yes, folks, that is right.
We are here in Group C, where we took a list of the top movies on rotten tomatoes of Will Ferrell's sent to our bracketologist. They kicked it back, randomized it. And here we have the two seed spirited going up against the 15 seed anchorman, the seven seed, the Lego movie going up against the ten seed blades of glory. Cody, where do you want to start?
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Dude, you know Will Ferrell is trying to cement his legacy with spirited, right? Yeah, he's coming for the greats. He's trying to be Scrooge, man. He's coming for Scrooge. You got to try not Scrooge off his pedestal. You got a Muppet Christmas carol. You got all the best Christmas movies, and he's coming for that ass.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: You're trying to become the definitive.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Talking about.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Imagine having. I think this is where a little bit of the hubris, maybe a little bit a peek into the mind of this man, because you are Will Ferrell. Right? You already have my all intents and purposes, probably a top ten Christmas movie on your hands with elf, right? Guaranteed.
This to me is like if Mariah Carey tried to do another Christmas song.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: All I want for Christmas is two. The second song, you're like, but why?
[00:03:41] Speaker A: You're cemented. Your legacy is forever cemented in Christmas. Why do you need more? What is this for? Who, why did you need to do this? And why do you want to tackle once. I think I'm shocked that once we made the Muppet Christmas movie that we decided a Muppets Christmas carol that we know. Let's keep making more of this story. We're done. It's over.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Okay. Once Bill Murray did Scrooge, we're like, okay, we've got the live action one. There's no way we can top. This is perfect. And then Michael Caine was like, well, I can do it with muppets. And we're. Yes, yes, that's fine. That is okay. Absolutely fine.
And then will Ferrell's like, what if I get my hand on that ball, Will? I don't.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Because the take on spirited, I have seen spirited. It's not that it's not a good movie or anything, but the whole point is that basically this happens every year that there's a massive corporation that will Ferrell works in that basically tries to determine once a year who is the person that we are going to essentially screw. Right? We're going to give them the whole treatment, right? We're going to give them the three ghosts. And will Ferrell, I think, is ghost of present, I think is with one he plays. And so they choose the Ryan Reynolds character. But maybe this time they either chose someone who is unredeemable, like his character. But we learned that part of the reason why he was chosen is because Will Ferrell's got a little crush on Reynolds.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Assistant's trying to mix work and pleasure a little bit.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: But he's a ghost.
You're a ghost dog. But as anyone knows, there's laws in the ghost realm where you can definitely come back as a person. You need a sacrifice, though. And standard, standard stuff. Standard. We all know it.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: We all read the necromance, the Black Dahlia. What do you think that was?
Any young angenu that goes missing, I say in air quotes, you can't see them, but Nick can. In California, that's a ritual to bring a ghost back because he's in love with someone's secretary. That old chestnut.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: You hear about that old, old chestnut. So it's interesting.
It's a musical. There's musical numbers, and, like, will Ferrell's.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Voice is not heralded enough. By the way, the guy can sing.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: It's fine.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: It's not like he's not going to sell out an opera house, but.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: No, but there's something about the hubris of, like, it just feels like he's like, I need to get a musical under my belt. And it's like. But did you.
I guess he is in producers.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: He's done springtime in Hitler and Germany.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like you had.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: But maybe he's like, no, I want to.
To. I don't want to be doing a funny Voice. No, I want them to hear pure will Ferrell. That's what I want. I want them to know what your boy's bringing to the know.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Here's the thing, I respect that he's trying to monopolize Christmas movies. You gotta love that attitude. That's the true american spirit. I've got to the top. How can I truly take over? I get it.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Anchorman does win, though. Anchorman does win, though.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Every time out of every. Yeah, dude.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Every kid, every kid, every boy in high school between 2004 and 2010, Anchorman was their personality. Because we didn't have the Internet yet, we didn't know anything else.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: This is only jokes that were acceptable in society from 2004 to 2010. These are the only jokes you could.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Tell all your friends out here sharing memes on instagram, we didn't have that.
We just used to yell Anchorman quotes at each other as we passed in the hallway. That was memes. That's what memes were.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: It's wild to me that someone would just, out of nowhere, aproposa, nothing else. It works 100% of the time.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: 60% of the time. It works 100% of the time.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: We're not even talking about numbers. Why did you. But it just got blurted out.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: It did. Because it escalated so quickly.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: It was like pop culture Tourette's.
Young men couldn't help themselves as they got through puberty. But say Anchorman quotes. Yeah, we got to move Anchorman on where it will go up against either the Lego movie or Blades of Glory. Now, Cody, you are in the scene. You are in the figure skating scene.
Do you feel blades of Glory is an accurate representation of this? You're like, yes, hold up. They're really true to the characters. They're really true.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: They're not true.
They get the Brian Boytano vibe in there. I really like that. I love that sure spirit. I just want to say really quickly about Anchorman. We weren't saved from the quotes of Anchorman until 2006, when Borat came out. We could start yelling, my wife. Finally. That's what finally set us free. Yeah.
Good run. That was literally, it had at least two strong years of. That's all we could say.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, 100%. And then it's those quotes and then my wife.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: But here's the thing. I've never seen Lego movie, but I've heard tale of Lego movie from adults, from kids, from just the wind has told me that the Lego movie is really good.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Lego movie is a fantastic. Is now the problem that Lego movie has in this bracket specifically. It's not that it's not a great movie because it's very good and it's very much about the power of imagination and the power of friendship. I think two things, you and I, champion and Harold, as much as anyone.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Else, loved both those things.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: So the whole thing is, and this is spoilers, but when the whole movie is taking place in a Lego universe, everything up to this point is Lego. You have not gotten a sense of anything else. You're like, oh, everything is about Lego. And then it finally fades out and you see that you're in a basement where a young child is playing with this massive Lego universe. It's got to be like a ten x ten table that. This full of Legos. Yeah, full of Legos.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Truly the dream. Who is this kid? And why was he not my friend? Right.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing, is that it's his dad's Legos and papa is will Ferrell. And he's the one.
He also does the voice of a villain. But the whole thing is that it's the dad's Legos. And dad comes down, he's like, what are you doing? You can't play with Legos.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Lego. It's. First of all, Nick, you sound like a fucking idiot. Lego. The plural of Lego is Lego. And you need to get. I'm not going to have Amy the Brickmasters, Amy and Jamie listening to this because I know they're big fans and they know I watch Lego masters all the time. I'm going to need you to tighten this shit up. Hey, you're embarrassing me in front of the Brickmasters.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: I know. I'm so sorry. You can't take me anywhere. I'm so sorry.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Thank you. Tighten it up. Lego or not.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Toy, though it is funny, because there is. You watch, you're like, why let the kid play with the Legos, man? What are you doing? But now I have Legos. And if I sort of got. If I saw a little grubby ass kid Touching. I don't care if it is my grubby ass kid. Get away from my legos.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Lego.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Nick.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Lego.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: My Lego.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Lego. My Lego. Get out of here.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Lego my Lego. That is Dominic Toretto's charger. What are you going to do? Just drive it around and act like you're. No, no, you're not.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: No, that's what I do. That's what Nick does.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: You don't even know how he would drive it, so you can't. Man, that is really the like that is the hardest part about Lego is they are fun to put together. But hot damn, if it's a toy that you're like, well, that was that.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Do anything with it. I've recently gotten to building Gundam models, the big ones, and I have so much fun building them. And they're totally. You can move them around and put them in any pose you want, like action figures. What's. I'm done with it. I'm like, well, that's done.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
I'm not going to expel the energy to create an imaginary universe where now.
All right, this is going to be. Hey, podcast vibe is changing. I want to get real here. What is that? What is that change? Where is it that I have better things to do with my time that you could see an action figure if I gave you two action figures if you were five years old, that's the rest of the day for you.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: That's easy. Rest of the day. It's a good day.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: And you'd have a wonderful time. If I give you two action figures right now, you'd be like, oh, cool. And you would just go put them up by the other action figures that you have and say, oh, thanks, man.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: I appreciate that. That was a great gift. But you're not going to bust them toys out if I got you two wrestling action figures and had the ring. Had an actual ring for you. Exactly. Looking at a packaged hangman. Adam page, that thing is not seen.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: The air that's within arm's reach right now. Yeah.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: So it's just one of those things where it's like, what is that change in us? Where you're like, is it that we're not as imaginative? You and I play D D our imaginations are ready to go.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah, we're out here playing games all the time. I'd like to think if you gave me a Wolverine action figure and a pocket, I would love to see how those two interact in the same universe. But I won't. I wouldn't. Yeah, it's because I got bills, dog. I'm trying to run a social media empire. I got bills. It's the problem. Bills. Once you pay a bill, the whimsy dies. The whimsy dies.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Maybe that's what the song Destiny's child.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Bills, bills, bills about.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: It's about women trying to maintain that whimsy. And they're like, can you do this? Because I don't want. Please, I don't want to grow up yet.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Please can you pay my bills? I need to play with my action figures.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: I'm not old enough yet. The world is too scary. Please pay my bills.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Here's where I'm at, though. The blades of Glory has got some.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Good quotables and stuff.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: And it's funny, but I don't know if I actually. As far as the pantheon of Will Ferrell movies, I don't know if it does it for me.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Can I say once again, we told you all that these were chosen from the Rotten Tomatoes list. So these movies by far are mostly the 16 top Will Ferrell movies. We did make some edits to include some classics.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: We took out sequels and stuff.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: But I'll tell you right now, we did not have to do that for Blades of Glory. Blades of glory sits as the number eleven. It is 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: I understand that.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: I remember seeing this and being like this felt like, once again, this is a year after Talladega nights, once again, which we talked about in the last bracket. Go. Listen, if you want to hear more. But we're like, that's clearly Will Ferrell at the height of his powers, getting to do what he wants. Blaze of glory almost feels like someone tried to make a movie. And we're like, you'd be hilarious in this. But don't understand what he's actually, I think, happened.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: I think someone wrote Blades of Glory for Will Ferrell. They were like, I got a movie idea. Will Ferrell's perfect. This is the kind of thing, he didn't audition for this part. It landed on his desk like, this is for you. We got this. And it was someone who thought they knew and they were close, but they just didn't get there. They didn't get over the edge quite. But if we're talking rotten Tomato scores, Lego movie is the number one.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Will Ferrell movie is the number 196 percent universally below. I mean, yeah, we'll move on the Lego movie where it will go up against the Anchorman. And I mean, honestly, folks, Anchorman is a class.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Here's the problem, though. Are we looking at it with these rose tinted glasses? Does Anchorman hold up now? I haven't watched it in probably five or six years. Does it hold up?
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Yeah. When is my last anchorman? It's been a minute. I will say it has been a minute. Does it hold up? I want to believe that it does, right?
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I mean, this is something we founded our entire teenage years on. Not hold up, Nick, as white men.
Has a white man ever hitched his wagon to something that didn't hold up.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: That many years later? Come on, now.
Come on, now. We all know. We all know. That's never happened before. Why would it happen now?
[00:15:22] Speaker B: I'm also torn because I kind of want to see the Lego movie. I've never seen it. I've heard good things. I've heard beautiful things. And I've been watching Lego masters. I want to play in this space. I'm so into Lego that I'm almost to the point where I want to actually touch a Lego.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: You're getting there. Where you're like, I might actually go get me some of these little bastards, these little guys.
I might even start clicking in. I might even start getting down again. Here's the thing, and this has happened many a times, where if Anchorman has to, was put into a bracket up against Talladega knights, right? Something where it's like, these are two greats going against each other. We're going to have to decide then. I'm fine with the loss. But if we have an opportunity to final four. Get it in there. And you're telling me, hey, you're going to watch the four best Will Ferrell movies, and if you start giving me a list and you don't say anchorman, I will not believe in the validity of this, even if definitively, if we come back and we're like, yeah, hey, wild thing doesn't hold up. Not as good. Not as good as we remember it. But I can't take seriously a list.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: That doesn't include Anchorman. Doesn't include Anchorman.
[00:16:35] Speaker A: I'm sorry.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: I feel like Lego movie is going through a buzsaw. Like, if it was in a different bracket, it might make.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: If. If we're talking about going up against, like, elf or something, I'd be like, we should push for this. But that also is my bias against elf.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: But you're wrong.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: But I understand.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: I think we got to go anchor man. It was the defining movie of a generation of humor, and it's really one.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Of those movies, too, that I don't remember seeing it in theaters. It was one of those movies where it felt like you're going over someone's house and they're like, hey, man, have you seen Anchorman? And then you beg. I haven't seen it, dude.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: There's so many lines that I say today still. I often say, like, stu likes to lay in this box that's completely see through. That's his glass case of emotion. Anytime someone does something in a video game that beats me, I say, I hate you. But God damn it, do I respect, like, all these lines are from the movie?
[00:17:31] Speaker A: It's so good. Yeah, I think we got to put Anchorman in, and we'll let the chips fall where they may after in the final four.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: But I think Ron Burgundy is my mustache goal. I think I'm going for that.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: I think you're getting there. You could get there. Get the hair. Do the full burgundy.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: I could do the full burgundy.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Your hair is not that far off. Get the full burgundy, my guy.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Go full burgundy on them.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Get yourself to a goodwill. Get you some suits.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: I got suits, bitch. I got suits.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: I know, but you almost have, like, I think your suits are too nice. I'm saying you got to go get, like, a 70. You got to get some pads. You got to get some shoulder pads.
You got some skinny, cool guy lapels. I need those lapels touching your shoulder blades. You know what I'm saying?
That's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about, like, oh, do you have a nice. No, no. I want you in a fucking Ron Burgundy suit.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Okay. I'll go with Ron Burgundy for Halloween.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: This got. I think you got that in the bag. All right. Well, that. Oh, man. If I shaved off, I think I could do Paul Rudd.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: We should. We could just do that together.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: It's the beginning of the year, and we already got Halloween figured out.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Easy. Fuck this. Bracket rules. Yeah. We got Anchorman. I think I need to put Lego movie on my list for future reference. Movies to watch.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to do your Tuesday nights with you and Catherine. It is up there. It deserves it. I think it is the Oscar winner, too, so it even has that prestige.
But. All right, folks, that is it. Anchorman going into the final four. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of friendly competition. If you want to watch your boys, a few things that you can do, as always, share with a friend, tell a friend, wherever you're listening to this, make sure you hit that. Like that. Follow that. Subscribe. Give us those five stars, please.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. Follow us on all of our social media, Instagram, Facebook, X at friendlycompod. If you have an idea for a whole 16 team tournament that you'd like to see us do, email us to us at
[email protected]. We could do best type of noodle. I'd do that.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Nudes. Dude, we should do nudes. That'd be good.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Just a nude bracket.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: That might be the next one. No matter what, if you send it in, if you have a favorite noodle, this is the time, because now I'm kind of thinking this might be the one we do. So, as always, shout out to charizard for that intro to our music. You want to hear more of their stuff? And over to bandcamp. Type in charizard and replace the vowels with sixes. That is going to be it for us, folks. Got a new episode coming out on Wednesday, but until then, I've been Nick Carey.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: And I'm Cody. Lena. See you in the boat.
