Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

There are many places I could start this review. Fr example, I could start it talking about the scene where Ron Burgundy is being chased by a shark. But why don’t I start at the beginning?

We pick up the story with Ron and Veronica married and living in New York. (And they have a kid now, and I’m not sure if the kid is just terrible, or if they wanted the kid to be terrible. Probably the latter.) However, when Veronica gets a promotion and Ron gets fired, they split up and Ron must work is way back to the top when he gets hired for “GNN” the first 24 hour news channel. So of course, its time to get the team back together.

The difference between Anchorman ten years ago and Anchorman now is that Steve Carrell became a big star in that time. The problem with that is that his character Brick is overdone and given far too much. Brick is great in small doses. For example, the scene with the green screen weather is short and sweet, but bloody hilarious. If they had kept him at the same level as before, we would have no problem. Unfortunately they do stupid things with him, like provide a romance with Kristen Wig which is downright awful. All of those scenes felt like they were from a different movie and were just an excuse for Carrell and Wig to “do their thing”. Cut em!

The opposite seemed to happen with Paul Rudd, who also became bigger in that time, but who I would have liked to see more of in this movie. David Koechner as Champ was the least funniest thing about the first movie and he’s pretty much on the same level here, but he rounds out the team so it works.

But lets face it; this movie is about Ron Burgundy. He’s kind of a big deal. And its great seeing him stay classy and doing his thing again. He provides a lot of humour, as always, just in who is character is. Not as much as they iconic first film, but enough.

Meagan Good joins the cast this time as their new producer. This is a problem since she feels like she comes from an entirely different movie. She’s not in sync with Ferrell or with the overall scotch-laced humour Anchorman provides.

At first all I could think of as I watched was how much better the first movie was. But then the plot starts to get more and more outlandish, and in a weird way it felt like a strong yet ridiculous character arc of redemption for Ron. Once he gets to the lighthouse, it gets completely stupid, but its a necessary stupidity.

Then they get to the park, and the threads completely unravel. And no one cares. At this point your IQ drops, but you have fun anyways.
7/10