If movie success was measured in total laughs, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues would be at the top of the list. Ron Burgundy is the cherry on top of a very good year for blockbuster comedies (The Heat, This Is the End, The World’s End). While failing to realize upon a solid premise and being a bit too long, Anchorman 2 uses the easy chemistry and fun improv with the leads to give countless people quotes to reuse and a heavy dose of laughter (with a little bit of a message thrown in).
Starting a few years after the first Anchorman, Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is married to Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) with a child as they co-anchor the news in New York. When Veronica is promoted and Ron fired, he is offered the 2 AM spot on the first all news network by the manager Linda Jackson (Meagan Good). Ron brings the Channel 4 San Diego news team with him: closet homosexual sportsman Champ (David Koechner), sex panther aficionado Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), and illiterate weatherman Brick (Steve Carell). The team instantly clashes with Jack Lime (James Marsden), the star of the 24 hour news team, so they decide to create pointless stories and pass them off as news: tell the people what they want to hear. The idea is an instant hit, and Ron rides the wave all the way to the top of the ratings at the expense of friends, family, and Baxter.
Rapid fire is the best way to describe the Anchorman movies. The jokes enter as quickly as they leave, usually with some overarching joke loosely holding the sequence together. While the memorable lines are not as frequent as the first Anchorman, but they are frequent enough to be reused ad nauseam by the public. Ron’s new signoff line will create lots of angry Fox News reporters since they wish they thought of it first. Brian Fantana’s new non-cologne craze is inspired with a little bit of a dark edge. Many more gags work than fail (the Brick romance subplot is jus ok), and the movie moves quickly enough (until the third act) so the audience won’t get bored with the gag.
The most frustrating aspect of Anchorman 2 is its wasted premise. Director/Writer Adam McKay pokes fun at the bastardization of news due to constant coverage: car chases, cute animals, and pro-American fluff pieces replace hard-hitting exposes of real problems. These scenes are funny yes, but they also have an edge that makes Anchorman’s sense of humor a little more pointed. The third act is set up to be a war of ratings versus journalism, and instead the movie dovetails into a family subplot about Ron’s hubris just to keep Veronica around. There is a song number and cameo fest (the most inspired being one of Ferrell’s good friends) that nearly save the ending, but the satirical edge is gone by this point, leaving the jokes to be adrift in search of meaning. Also, the movie is almost 2 hours long; side gags could easily have been cut instead of testing the limits of the audiences capacity for humor.
The acting is the same as in the first Anchorman. Will Ferrell knows this is the role he will be most known for, and has promoted this movie so heavily that he knows the ins and outs of how to play Ron Burgundy. David Koechner is relegated to the side in this one, in favor of the other two members of the team. Wise choice: Rudd is very good here, delivering lots of funny lines and actually being the underwritten heart of the story (he is the only one who really stands up to Ron). Carell is much more famous than when he did the first movie, so they needed to expand his role into a romance with his doppelgänger Chani (Kristen Wiig). Brick is better in short quick bursts; when asked to carry a scene, it grows old usually pretty quickly. Meagan Good and Christina Applegate are given little to do, though Good is the source for lots of great racial humor by Ferrell. The cameos are hit and miss, but the general through line is the better the comedic chops of the actor in the cameo, the funnier the cameo was.
Anchorman 2 is meant for fans of the first one. There is nothing really new here to dissuade a detractor from seeing the second film. The big irony here is the 24 hour news networks are the big reason Anchorman 2 has been so heavily marketed. It appears the shoe is on the other table, which is turned.