Occam's Razor

The general rule of movie sequels is that the sequel is a pale imitation of the original, and was written primarily to make more money off the success of the original film. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, the belated sequel to the successful Anchorman (2004), proves the rule is true.

Oh dear god, this is a painful movie to watch, even if you like screwball humor, which was the appeal of the original movie. To get through it, it helps to like the underlying actors. Will Ferrell (playing big-haired anchorman Ron Burgundy), of course, is known for lots of movies other than Anchorman, and is one of the forces behind funnyordie.com. Steve Carell (Brick Tamland, weatherman), of course, played Michael Scott over many seasons of The Office as well as a forty-year-old virgin, which he sort of plays in this movie as well.

One sign of a sequel in trouble is when they stuff Hollywood A list players into bit parts. So you get Harrison Ford as a network CEO, Tina Fey as an entertainment reporter, Liam Neeson as a History Channel host and Will Smith as an ESPN reporter. It helps to be on the A list because it means your career can survive association with bad movies like this one.

There are sophomoric movies and there are movies that basically only kindergarteners will find funny. This is the latter kind of movie. It includes “hilarious” bits like a fried chicken outfit that actually serves fried bats and an RV on cruise control that Ron leaves driverless going down the interstate. They took the things about the first movie that made it generally entertaining, and dumbed them down ten more times.

Naturally the plot is convoluted, which is perhaps to be expected for a comedy, but Jesus, this plot is one frigging mess. Ron and Veronica are married and have a six-year-old son Walter (Judah Nelson) and are both co-anchors at a New York City network-affiliated TV station in 1980. Network CEO Mack Tannen (Harrison Ford) calls them into his office, they think to be promoted to prime time news anchors. Veronica gets chosen and Ron is unceremoniously fired for being, well, Ron. He heads back to San Diego where he makes an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. Immediately afterward, a talent scout for a new 24 hours news station, GNN, persuades him to come back to New York. Ron of course goes to fetch his old gang. Champ, the sportscaster (David Koechner) has turned into a crazy right wing Republican selling fried bat wings as chicken. Brick is psychotic and speaks at his own funeral. Brian, the sportscaster (Paul Rudd) seems to be channeling Matthew McConaughey and intimates he gave crabs to Florence Henderson (that’s supposed to be funny?) Ron is supposed to bring his team to the Big Apple for his show, which turns out to be from 2 AM to 5 AM. He is just a small potato next to telegenic Jack Lime (James Marsden), the prime time GNN actor.

Ron hasn’t lost his ability to be uncouth. His ignorant mouth gets him in trouble pretty much everywhere he goes. His boss is a take no prisoners younger black woman Linda (Meagan Good). Ron manages to immediately touch all the racial triggers in the worst possible way. Anyhow, Ron decides to wing his middle of the nighttime slot, and models Fox News that had not yet been invented. He does it by highlighting stories only the National Inquirer would love and which play on people’s patriotism. The show takes off and a lot of predictable things for a movie this bad happen. His improbable success means that Linda puts the move on Ron, and boy are they an odd couple. Meanwhile, Ron gets the rap of being a bad parent while Christina dates a famous psychologist (played by Greg Kinnear) who Ron believes can read minds.

Somewhere in the convoluted plot while at the height of his success Ron goes blind and a lot of kindergarten humor is exercised when he takes residence in a lighthouse. This includes creating a fire in the dishwasher, cooking poker chips for dinner and lots of stumbling over things. Ron and Christina sort of get back together, Ron tries to be a better dad and they even adopt (and I swear I am not making this up) a pet baby shark. Eventually surgery which conveniently leaves no scars restores Ron’s sight, and he goes back to work for GNN and sort of resolves his bad parent rap by belatedly making it to his son’s piano recital. To do this he first has to get through a gang war among various TV anchors and their crews in a city park. It was funny when it was done in the original movie; here it is not the least bit funny, just with ten times the cast of characters. Seriously, you will want to view this part between cracks in your fingers.

You will get a few inadvertent chuckles in. You will probably laugh more if you see this with a group instead of by yourself. This is the kind of movie to see with a few beers in your belly before the movie starts. To enjoy it you will need to lower your standards far lower than they have been lowered before. Beer will help but it might not lower them far enough. I’d say see it with your kindergartener, but there are occasional swear words and a few adult situations, so it’s not even appropriate for them.

Anchorman 2 is frankly an awful movie masquerading as a comedy that it largely fails to execute. The humor is so strained that the result has no substance at all. I assume the money was good. Sadly, Will Farrell shares the writing credits for this disaster.

If you haven’t seen the original Anchorman, that is worth your time. This one isn’t. It would be generous to say it’s a parody of the original movie. It’s frankly a massive embarrassment to anyone associated with it. I wish I had been warned.

1.8 points on my four-point scale.

[xrr rating=1.8/4]