Most people who can appreciate the daft and the silly enjoyed the original Anchorman. Even though it embodied everything that was daft and silly, it also contained a certain level of satire and believability.
Anchorman 2 picks up a few years after the first instalment. Fictional newscaster, Ron Burgundy, has now married his co-anchor, but we join them when they’re basically splitting up. This automatically resets the whole film and any progression that the characters made in the first film have to be gone through all over again.
Also, as with many comedies which were more successful that predicted, the sequel tries to crank things up a little too far. As with the ‘Hangover’ franchise, what you get with Anchorman 2 is more of the same, only turned up too high to be believable. The best way I heard someone phrase it was when they were talking about Steve Carell’s character, Brick Tamland. In the first film he was dumb. Just dumb and kind of lovable at the same time. However, in part 2 he’s no longer just a bit dappy, but he’s now completely stupid. His character has totally changed and it’s too over the top to be funny.
Another thing that doesn’t help the film is its running time. It’s quite long – or at least longer than most comedies. It may benefit from a bit more editing and taking out about quarter of an hour here or there.
But not everything’s bad. I chuckled a fair few times. It’s not a complete waste of time, but I couldn’t help but think that I’d seen quite a few of the jokes before – some even from Anchorman 1 (take the ‘newscasters’ fight’ for example).
It’ll never be the classic that the first one was and, if you haven’t seen the first instalment, I recommend you start with that and see if you like it. If you do then give the second one a try. It has its moments, but will probably be appreciated more by the Anchorman die-hards than the general public.
6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights
