Anchorman 2: The Legend continues see’s the return of the legend that is Ron Burgundy, San Diego’s top rated newsman. The prosperity of the 70’s and the channel 4 news team is long behind him. The team have gone their separate ways and seem to have hit rock bottom, until Ron is approached by a new 24-hour news channel to host the graveyard slot. Finally, seeing a light at the end of a very dark tunnel Ron reassembles the old team in order to bring back the glory days. In good old Ron Burgundy and the Anchorman fashion, they struggle to keep things normal and classy but there idiotic and less than PC approach takes the first 24-hour news channel by storm, but as ever, with Ron, nothing ever runs that smoothly when ego’s start to get in the way.
With nearly a 10 year wait for the arrival of the sequel, Anchorman has built a strong cult following, which means there are huge pressures on this film to follow in such legendary footsteps. With, initially, Paramount Pictures turning down the original idea for this film “due to a lack of budgets” it was back to the drawing board in order to convince them it was a good idea. So what can we expect from this long awaited sequel and is it worth the hype?
Moving the story from San Diego to New York seemed like a natural progression, and thankfully, the return of Will Ferrell as Burgundy along with the likes of Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner as the anchorman team and Christina Applegate as Burgundy’s wife, the characters along with feel of the first movie, felt like they have never been away.
Delivering line after line of hilariously crude one liner and idiotic stunts from the outset of this film expectation were set sky high and for the first hour there wasn’t anyone who failed to laugh so hard they nearly wet themselves. However, as the film progressed the comedy continued but the laughs just seemed to dry up. It turns out 2 hours of the same old tired inane jokes and foolish stunts just got a bit too much.
Although this is a comedy, there is also a side storyline which many won’t have picked up on even if it’s blatantly obvious. Considering this is set in the 80’s having a female, black boss of any company, character Linda Jackson played by the extremely sexy Meagan Good, especially in America, and in an inter-racial relationship was extremely unthinkable. This whole storyline leads to many inappropriate and extremely un-pc comments and lines, which actually, in any other environment would be unacceptable, but in this film just added to the stupidity but also highlighted how far we’ve come since the backward days of the late 20th century.
Then we have some random battle scene towards the end of the film which is littered with so many cameos. It’s seems to me that all wanted to jump on this cash machine band wagon. We were graced with numerous different news teams from around the world headed up by some of hottest names in showbiz from Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, Liam Neeson, Kanye West, Drake, and Sacha Baron Cohen to name just a few. Whilst the film seemed to descend into complete chaos this is one of the latter scenes that brought back the shake your head in disbelief laugh.
Overall, Anchorman 2 does have the entertainment factor and Will Ferrell and co are comedy genius’s. Whether the near 10 year wait for the sequel was worth it I’m not so sure. As sequels go I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse but after losing its way a little halfway through and descending into a bit of a chaotic mess with the storyline becoming just completely random, it might just leave you with a few mixed emotions to whether it was complete genius or just a bit lacking in the cult status this franchise has achieved.
By Zehra Phelan