Nearly a decade after the original Anchorman (2004), Ron Burgundy and crew return in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Perhaps a little overdue, the formula that turned the first Anchorman into a college kid cult hit remains intact, but that college kid has grown up.
The so-called legend continues with Ron and his wife Veronica Corningstone co-anchoring a nightly news program in New York. When she gets a promotion, Ron Burgundy, the narcissistic nincompoop, leaves her and their son Walter to go back to San Diego and try to hit rock bottom only to be scooped up by upstart 24-hour news program GNN. After a series of getting-the-gang-back-together vignettes, Burgundy and friends head back to New York in search of redemption.
Set in the very early ’80s, the combination of absurdist wackiness and look-how-far-we’ve-come humor is still this franchise’s bread and butter, but in a post-smartphone, meme-filled lolcats world, a lot of the things that worked so well in the first time around have become passé in the past 9-plus years.
Co-writers Ferrell and McKay try to make fleeting commentary on the sad state of infotainment journalism, but stop just short of any meaningful satire that could have elevated this throwaway sequel by giving it some teeth. Worse still is the racism and misogyny that would have served as a cathartic laugh; a reprimanding of our collective past faults and a self-congratulatory pat on the back for overcoming them, if they hadn’t forgotten to include the ironic wink.
At two hours, Anchorman 2 could have used either funnier jokes or a more ruthless editor, but one aspect of the film should have been given even more screen time to flesh out. Since the first Anchorman, Steve Carrell’s comedic star has risen to a point on par with Will Ferrell, so seeing him reprise his bit role as quirky weatherman Brick Tamland seems a little out of place considering the Steve Carrell we’ve all become familiar with. That said, his brief, strange flirtations and romance with Kristin Wiig’s equally odd receptionist Chani make for some of the more offbeat and inspired moments of the film. It would have been nice to see more of that than more of the same lesser versions of decade-old jokes.
