ANCHORMAN 2

No one was more surprised by the cult hit status of ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ (2004) than its creators. Their hopes were that audiences would connect with the buffoon antics of the Action News Team headed by a misogynist idiot, but what they got was one of the most beloved and quoted comedies of the past decade. A sequel was demanded, and nearly a decade later it has been delivered. But does ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’ expand on the original, or is it just much of the same?

When his wife Veronica (Christina Applegate) is chosen for a major promotion at a major New York station and Ron (Will Ferrell) is fired, he falls into despair until he is asked to work on a revolutionary news concept: a 24-hour news channel. He assembles his original news team together again and takes over the graveyard shift, where their combination of sexist and banal reporting get them killer ratings and invents a whole new style of news reporting in the process. But as always with Ron Burgundy, the higher he flies, the further he has to fall.

To begin with, ‘Anchorman 2’ seems to be following comfortably in its predecessor's footsteps. The first film was never a great film, but it had a charm to it, especially in the relationship between Ron and his news team (David Koechner, Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell), and the first act of the sequel makes the most out of their undeniable chemistry. However, once Ron begins his rise to the top, the film very quickly falls apart, leaving the supporting characters behind, becoming bloated and tedious. It begins to rely too much on the audience's familiarity with the first film, and you start to feel like you’ve heard this all before. The biggest problem with the film though is that it’s just too goddamn long. At two hours, it doesn’t have the necessary rhythm to make the comedy work, especially when the film falls into almost-stream-of-consciousness absurdity that has little to do with the narrative. Often the film seems to be trying too hard to get a laugh; take the epic news team battle at the end. It’s too full of celebrities that are only there because of reasons, and it takes so long to introduce the combatants that by the time the fighting starts, the comedy is gone. At half an hour shorter, it could have been far more effective and less indulgent. And this is a great pity, as the film has a cracking premise, and hidden within the flabby comedy is a genuine statement on the banality of the news business. There is a brain in there somewhere, but it seems to have been neglected in order to shove as many jokes into the film as possible.