Cinema Reviews

Anchorman 2 Review

18th Dec 2013

After a decade wait and constant pressure from fans, Writer director Adam McKay and Will Ferrell finally cracked the shell of what would become the story line for Anchorman 2 – reuniting Ron Burgundy with his news team, his wife and a brand new assortment of supporting characters in their way – and most shockingly of all – despite the fact that they decided to wait until all was ready, everything seems to be a little bit too much the same as before.

Yes – much like a sequel to a comedy franchise that rushes into production within a couple of years of the original, Anchorman 2 yields pretty much the same results. The format is the same, the tone is the same, and there are various scene and character beats that are ripped right out of the heart of the first film and repeated here.

Yes Brick (Steve Carrel) is doing his weirdo routine only much more of it. Paul Rudd is still spouting socially dubious lines about women, and the other one, he’s gotten louder as well. As for the plot. Well the last time Ron Was an established newsman who had the cart balanced tipped away from his favour thanks to his attitude towards beau-to-be Christina Applegate. He lost faith in his work, antagonised rival newsman, lost all of his friends, and fought his way back to glory finding time along the way to partake in a cameo heavy news team brawl.

Here we find Ron at the top of his game, but the cart is suddenly imbalanced thanks to his attitude towards his current Beau (Christina Applegate) and as a result slowly loses faith in his work, starts to lose all his friends, antagonises a rival newsman and has to fight back to glory again, finding time along the way to partake in a cameo heavy news team brawl.

With so much being the typical Hollywood sequel “let’s make it bigger” you find more jokes inserted than ever before. Sadly this gives the film a rather big and clumsy hit and miss ratio. The upside of course being that when some of the jokes work (usually throw-away one-liners) they really work well. All of the main actors in their roles know the parts, but are perhaps ramping it up a little too high this time.

There is also an embarrassing section of the film where Ron leaves almost the entire film to go and be with his family in an extended sequence that is almost all but devoid of laughs and introduces a rather strainge element of them having a pet shark. The film slows right down with a sudden thud and barely recovers – if it were not for the cameo heavy news team brawl. Yes you know full well that you can probably predict at least 75% of the names that are sure to show up here. But the other 25% are a treat – despite the sequence just being a bunch of nonsensical introductions and then shots of people fighting with little to no actual logic to the action.

A shame then that the film has been brewing for such a long time for them to come up so short and tackle the project so lazily like any other commonplace sequel.

Hardcore fans will be fairly satisfied in perhaps the same way that Wayne’s World fans were fairly satisfied with Wayne’s World 2. Speaking of which – like that film the weirdo sidekick get’s a dorky girlfriend as well (Kristen Wiig once again).

Will it pave way for a third installment?, who cares.