Back at the beginning of 2013 when I published my post on 2012 Year in Review, I included a number of predictions for 2013. One of those was that Anchorman 2 would "withstand being the most anticipated sequel of the year and deliver". I am pleased to say that this is one prediction that came true, although some of the others were off the mark (World War Z definitely beat Warm Bodies as the zombie movie of the year, Seth McFarlane unfortunately didn't nail the Oscars hosting gig). Debateable though if this or Catching Fire was the most anticipated given the box office records the Hunger Games sequel has been smashing around the world.
Anchorman 2 picks up a little after the end of the first movie. Ron and Veronica are now married with a son and co-anchoring the San Diego local news. The rest of the team is scattered for reasons unknown. Ron and Veronica are summoned to the office of the big boss (the first of a series of excellent cameos) where they think they are going to be promoted to the primetime news hosts. However only Veronica gets the gig and oh boy is Ron not happy about that. Cut to a few months later and Ron is alone and in a sorry state when he is approached by Freddie Schapp to move to New York and work for GNN (Global News Network) on their new concept of 24 hour news. Which Ron promptly calls "stupid" when he hears it but hey, what choice does he have? So he gets the team back together, moves to New York and takes a shot at this stupid new concept, having a series of bizarre adventures and trying to win Veronica back along the way.
From the get-go Anchorman 2 is very funny although some of the gags are recycled from the first movie (Ron's pre-news warmups are more of the same stupidity) and they start to become a little more sparse as the film progresses and life lessons have to be fit in. The humour continues to be on the stupid/bizarre/offensive side of things and if anything, takes the weirdness even further than the first one. So if you didn't like that, you won't like this at all. The introduction of Kristen Wiig's character Chani as a love interest for Brick creates some very uncomfortable humour as these two are almost like mentally deficient children and if they were real people would actually be unable to survive in the world let alone have jobs. But it is pretty funny if you're not too sensitive. It is overstuffed with big star cameos, particularly in another news team smackdown.
While frequently gut-bustingly, tears in the eyes funny in the first half, the second half is less so because of the relationship drama that needs to be resolved but also because the film actually has some very good points to make about what has happened to "news" over time. Smartly ignoring the 1970s setting, the film skewers our obsession with light news using current popular issues such as "cute animals", "car chases" and "patriotic stories". When you have so much time to fill, is it inevitable that you are going to end up giving people stories they want to hear about rather than telling them what they need to know? It's left me reflecting on these issues even a week after seeing the movie, as well as quoting all the funny lines.
It doesn't have the surprise factor of the first movie, but it certainly has a lot of positive points with most of the original cast returning to provide great support to the wonderful creation that is Ron Burgundy. Will Ferrell finds some new shades to Ron in this one with the introduction of what could be yet another Wes Mantooth style inferior rival in Jack Lime (James Marsden hamming it up) but instead Ron is in awe of him - "he's magnificent" he breathes upon first seeing him.
This is a very funny movie for the first hour and then a smart, kinda funny movie in the second portion. So I'm giving this 3.5 stars out of 5.
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