Thursday, January 30, 2014

Movie Review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" (2013)

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Movie"Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"
Director: Adam McKay
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 59 minutes

Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is back, and this time, it's the 1980's. After he is fired from his job as a national news anchor, Ron is down in the dumps. He and his wife Veronica (Christina Applegate) have a fight, and Ron leaves her and his son in New York after she refuses to quit her job on the same show that fired him. Ron is offered a job at GNN, a new 24-hour cable news network. He decides to hunt down the members of the Channel 4 news team and move them to New York in an effort to revive their careers.


While this movie isn't as great as the first installment, it does offer up a lot more laughs than we expected. In fact, we didn't really have high expectations for this movie because most sequels, well, suck, especially comedic sequels. This movie isn't as quotable as the first, and a lot of the jokes are the same old, rehashed ones from the previous movie, but that doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable viewing experience.

What we did like about this movie is that it continues with the "Anchorman" tradition or being a satire on society. "Anchorman 2" pokes fun at the 24-hour news cycle and what passes for "news" today compared to then. News went from seriously covering major social and political issues to car chases, celebrity pregnancies, and other speculative commentaries by news anchors without any basis in fact or reality. Ron gets the idea that it's better to create news through massive sensationalism rather than simply reporting what's going on in the world. While this garnered him a huge rating boost, it damaged the integrity of what it meant to be an anchor.

The acting is still pretty good, except it is definitely a bit more over-the-top than its predecessor. Ferrell lays it on reeeeally thick. It also seems like this film features a lot more Brick (Steve Carell) because so many people love the character from the first movie. The romance scenes featuring Carell and Kristen Wiig seem forced and almost as if they are setting this franchise up for a trilogy. In reality, we could have seen any scene with Wiig hit the cutting room floor and it wouldn't have really made that much of a difference. It's not that we don't like her, it's just that her character adds nothing to the movie and is a superfluous female counterpart to the Brick character.

Other than that, this movie was definitely solid. It's a bit of a surprise how much we enjoyed it, and while it won't be as loved as its counterpart, it's worth seeing if you're a fan.

My Rating: 7/10
BigJ's Rating: 7.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 74%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?

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