The best thing, worst thing, and main thing about Ron Burgandy's return in "Anchorman 2:The Legend Continues" in about the time it takes to watch the trailer. Also don't forget to take a shot at the best ever challenge in the comments!
REVIEW TEXT:
When a movie includes an exclamation mentioning “the Bedpan of Gene Rayburn” you can probably assume Ron Burgundy is back.
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“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is the sequel to Will Ferrell’s comedy hit Anchorman, and brings back our favorite news team from the 70s, this time to to do news on a brand new 24 hour news channel. The movie follows what happens when Ron and the gang invent a whole new style of news to generate ratings. Crazy as it sounds it’s been almost 10 years since the first Anchorman, so can Will and the boys put together a movie as quotable, surreal, and funny as the first after all this time? Yeah pretty much.
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Look, if you loved Anchorman, I have a feeling you will love this one too. The tone is almost identical, the jokes are just as strange, and the whole thing is full of the nonsense that Will Farrell has built a career on. People love this stuff, and for good reason. First of all these guys work really well together. Farrell is once again joined by Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and David Koechner and you can tell these guys are having a blast together. Their chemistry feels effortless and allows the zaniness to land with the punch it deserves. These movies have such a well defined and distinctive sense of humor that everyone knows what they are getting into. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a story here. There actually is. In fact, there is a really interesting, though certainly not subtle, satire her about the state of modern 24 hour news. I feel like, even more so than the first, this anchorman actually has something to say. But the best thing for me was the star studded, cameo laden, beyond surreal finale. I refuse to give anything away, but it was just moment after moment of “I can’t believe that such and such is in this”, followed by 10 minutes of absolute insanity, somehow even more insane than the 110 minutes that preceded it.
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I do think its important to note though that the movie does have stretches where it stops down the silly to further the story. When this happens the movie can stall quite a bit, especially if you’re mainly there to see the goofball savants do their thing. We can go ahead and tag it the worst thing. I mean, for a story nerd like me I can appreciate it, but the truth is, there aren’t likely many people in the theater, who are overly concerned about plot progression and character development. Plus, some of the moralizing about modern news gets a little strong at times. I think it works well when it’s over the top satire, but when it’s delivered as more serious plot it just feels a bit off. One more note for concerned parents, this movie makes ample use of the stretchy PG-13 rating, pushing the limit of innuendo and subject matter right to the edge. Again, not that that should be a surprise if you’ve seen the first.
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and at the end of the day that’s true about most of “Anchorman 2”, it doesn’t stray far at all from the DNA that made the first such a hit. The laughs and quotes are just as surreal and come just as often. It’s only because of a few slow spots and some over moralizing that I’d bring it down to a B.
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