The mustache. The platform shoes. The leisure suits. The wavy hairdos. All this and more can be found in the first Anchorman and all of the hopes and dreams of John Q. Moviegoer can be left in the 70s along with the greatness of the first movie. Families on sofas erupted at the first leak of trailers for Anchorman 2. Will Ferrell made the first announcement on late night television and life could not get any better for fans of Ron Burgundy and his beautifully awkward one-liners. Once there was a date set for the end of December 2013, the countdown began and could not end soon enough. I was one of these people. There was nothing more that I was looking forward to seeing than the sequel to the 2004 movie that everyone still quotes endlessly. It physically hurts and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, Anchorman 2 is the disappointment of 2013.
It is now the 1980s. News networks are coming up with broader and stranger ways to deliver the news. Ron Burgundy (Ferrell, as usual) is fired from his job as the co-anchor for the global news network. His wife, the majestically aging Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), has been given the top slot that Ron should be sharing with her, and as you can imagine, Ron has a famous meltdown that involves screaming and emotional speech-giving. He teams up with his old news team that leads unnecessarily random new lives and embarks on a journey to give headlines at a 24-hour network.
Ron Burgundy, Brick Tamland, Champ Kind, and Brian Fantana are the Fab Four of the news industry and make up a team comparable to the Fab Four from Liverpool. This sequel is a disservice to what classic image they have been given by a generation of comedy lovers. People love the simple stupidity of Brick (Steve Carell, who else?), now he's been made out to have been dumber than ever and his witty unneeded observations that make him so funny contradict the character that is popular in the first place. Champ and Brian (David Koechner and Paul Rudd) have lost the luster of playboy goofs they once were, 9 years ago. There can be no over statement that Anchorman 2 is done and then flipped over and burned some more.
The laughs are there, briefly. Pushing the envelope is what I think director/writer Adam McKay was going for but ended up with a teleprompter full of inappropriate dialogue even Mr. Burgundy himself would be ashamed to read. It's one thing to try to live up to the reputation (or Legend, in this case) of a movie that sky rocketed the fame of someone like Will Ferrell, but it's another thing to over-do a good joke. This movie tanks the anticipation that the Durango commercials and Burgundy cameos of the past few months. This is the top story as the biggest flop of the year. Milk was a bad choice, and so was a sequel. Grade: 5/10
going to see this Monday......i hope you are wrong!!!! KCCO Drew
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