I’ll go ahead and be honest with you, everyone. On two counts; one, I didn’t intend to do reviews of more recent films (so don’t expect this sort of thing that often), and two, I didn’t really enjoy the first Anchorman movie. I enjoy several films of Will Ferrell’s - ones that come to mind immediately are Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Stranger Than Fiction - but Anchorman was just never one of them. I didn’t dislike it, and I’ve admittedly used the “Boy, That Escalated Quickly!” meme often enough, but there just wasn’t much there for me to enjoy. I didn’t really have the same laughs I did from the aforementioned Talledega Nights or Blades of Glory. To me, it was a pretty forgettable film save for a few good laughs.
Then they made a sequel.
Needless to say, I was more than a little confused by this. But apparently people have said it’s really good. In fact, even now, the film is getting mostly positive reviews for its work. And, of course, the only real question I can ask is - why? After viewing it, I had seen a film that does fairly well for its first half before dissolving into a rather disjointed mess. Not that it’s bad per se, but it really doesn’t have any sort of structure following the midpoint and really just breaks down into some gags that would have been better serving in a comedic anthology film like And Now For Something Completely Different.
The plot involves Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) being fired from a prominent news station in New York while his now-wife, Veronica Cornerstone (Christina Applegate), gets the anchor position in his place. Destitute, Ron falls in with a new attempt to broadcast the news twenty-four hours a day, called the Global News Network. What follows is satire of how television news had descended from journalistic integrity into only caring about ratings and leading into the media cesspool that we know today. Who started it? Ron Burgundy, with a single sentence and the 2 a.m. time slot for GNN.
The subplots along with this involve such “gems” as; Burgundy attempting to connect with his son, Burgundy attempting to deal with his new boss (Meagan Good) who he immediately clashes with, and Burgundy’s fellow newscaster Brick (Steve Carrell) developing a relationship with similarly mentally handicapped GNN office employee (Kristen Wiig). All of these situations lead to admittedly very hilarious jokes in their own right.
However, these are set up and played out and there’s nothing to them. They’re gags for right then and there’s few to no call backs or pay off for any of them. No better is this demonstrated in actual dialogue when Burgundy is taken to a dinner with his boss’s family. Some of the most racially insensitive dialogue that crosses the line not once, not twice, but many thousands of time...and then is almost handwaved away on the cab ride home. And a lot of the film is like that. There are a few memorable things, but I could remember very few things from the film in the end...at least until the second half of the film. The second half of the film, in particular the last twenty minutes or so, is distinctly memorable.
That, by the way, is not remotely a compliment.
Around the midpoint, Burgundy loses his sight due to an accident and is forced to leave newscasting. Living in a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, he eventually reconnects with his wife and son and through the power of comedy becomes a more loving husband and father - even nursing a baby shark back to health. The problem with this plot, however, is that it really just kills the pacing of the film dead. It completely shifts gears, and then when Burgundy gets his sight back it shifts right back with very little warning, leaving us wondering why exactly they bothered.
Nearing the resolution of the film, Burgundy is faced with some rival newscasters coming to attack him as he tries to reach his son’s piano recital, exactly like the all out brawl in the first film between the San Diego news stations. At first, it is simply the two rival teams at the GNN, but they are soon joined by the BBC (headed by Sasha Baron Cohen), ESPN (headed by Will Smith), the CBC (headed by Jim Carrey and Marion Cotillard), and MTV (headed by by Kanye West). Into the fray as well comes the History Channel (headed by Liam Neeson), who also bring to the fight a minotaur and the ghost of Stonewall Jackson (John C. Reilly). Weapons are drawn, including Brick pulling out a gun from the future (and just laughing maniacally when asked where he got it), and the battle begins.
And then, Harrison Ford shows up from earlier in the film and becomes a “were-hyena”. Just if there were not actually enough ways for you to not only ask "what the hell is going on?", but to frequently enough that you are asking it at an average of every thirty seconds.
In spite of it all, Burgundy manages to get to his son’s recital after coming to the realization that is family is more important than the ratings, attends Brick’s wedding, and then gets attacked by a shark. And, literally, that’s the end. Lights up, exit audience, the end.
I’ll give Anchorman 2 it’s due credit, when it hits it out of the park, it really hits it out of the park (I think the phrases “Bat is the chicken of the cave” and “Cat is the chicken of the railway” will be sliding themselves into conversation whenever possible for weeks to come for me), but it doesn’t really do it with any consistency (twice that I can recall after viewing), and it fails to form any cohesive narrative. I’d say it borders on the absurd, but it doesn’t. It runs right over the line of absurdity, reaches back, and drags it along with the duration of its run.
It’s also abundantly clear that Will Ferrell and his friends are really enjoying what they’re doing. They have claimed in interviews, and Will Ferrell has said on Twitter that he really wanted to do another Anchorman movie, so I really can’t fault them for that on it. But the fact is that Anchorman 2 is a really unnecessary sequel. Not that it doesn’t have it’s moments, but the world could have done without it.
No comments:
Post a Comment