By Will Amari
Staff Writer
Breaking news! Funny-man, Will Ferrell and Movie Director, Adam McKay are back at it again with a sequel to the cult classic, Anchorman and unless you have been living under a rock; you’ve probably already heard of this.
In Anchorman 2, Ron Burgundy (played by Will Ferrell) and his cast of co-anchors including Brian Fantana (played by Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and Champ Kind (David Koechner) come to New York were they join GNN, the first twenty-four hour news team.
A couple of my close friends and I went out to see the movie during winter break. I was wearing my, “I love lamp shirt,” and walked into the theater with butterfingers, sprite, and high expectations for the film.
Ignoring the fact that movie sequels and spinoffs are notorious for being overdone and exceptionally terrible, (I’m talking about you Spider Man 3, and all the sequels for the Pirates of the Caribbean) I kept my fingers cross and my mind open. It is after all starring some of my favorite actors in comedy. How bad could it be? With a cast so strong and naturally funny, this movie should have no problem with making me laugh. And it did precisely that.
I had fun with the gags and the many celebrity cameos, and Steve Carell’s outrageous screaming made it all the better. This movie for me was like watching one SNL skit after the next. Some jokes were fun and memorable and some were just plain crude. It’s like the writers all sat in one big room and said, “Okay forget about the plot; give us all the jokes you can think of.” And that’s Anchorman 2 in a nutshell.
I felt that the movie was sloppy and ten minutes too long. Unlike the first Anchorman, this one wasn’t as tightly compacted and the jokes were uneven. Some parts of the movie was filled to the brim with all the hilarious outbursts and dumb jokes you would expect from any cult comedy, while other parts lagged and the writing wasn’t as strong.
The problem with this film is that there are too many tedious sub-plots and unnecessary characters. At one point, Ron Burgundy goes blind, then you turn around, and he’s dating a black lady. These scenes I found to be distracting and the least bit funny.
Junior, Matt Schreiber went to see it with his friends a couple days after its release. He says, “It (Anchorman 2) is one of the best comedies that I’ve seen in years.”
Schreiber, who is a fan of both films, would argue that Anchorman 2 is even better than the first one. “I thought the second one (Anchorman 2) was better done. It seemed like with the first one they were experimenting with it and trying to make some parts serious and some parts comedy. But with the second one, it seemed like they didn’t care and that they went all out comedy.”
All jokes aside, the film does deliver a good message; a friendly reminder to never take the news too seriously. Anchorman 2 illustrates this message well by not taking themselves too seriously. And for me, that’s how we should see all comedies, as a joke. Is Anchorman 2 a perfect movie? No, of course not! But it does do a perfect job at making us laugh. And that’s harder to do.
Leave a Reply