The advantage of low expectations from the film is that it is usually difficult to be disappointed. Judging by the habits of Hollywood producers, who celebrate the slightest success of a project by announcing at least one sequel, and promotional material that accompanied this project, the sequel to the interesting comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy from 2004 did not promise much, on the contrary. However, as I have already mentioned, depending on your expectations, your general impression after watching will depend.
This time, with the seventies far behind him, Ron Burgundy with his wife Veronica Cornigston (Christina Applegate) leads the evening news in New York and is one of the most popular faces in the state. Suddenly, his boss decides to fire him and give his wife the opportunity to run the news herself. Everything is changing in his life. He is returning to San Diego and working as a manager at the Marine Park. That job doesn’t fulfill him too much, so the meeting with Freddie, the executive producer of the Global News Network, which is the first TV program with news that is broadcast 24 hours a day, opens the door to his old glory. He gathers his team, Champa, Brick and Brian, and goes to New York, but there he encounters competition and other problems.
The recording of this sequel was accompanied by problems from the very beginning. At first, the studio did not want to approve the project, justifying that it was too expensive, but after the decision of the main actors to drastically reduce the salary, it was still approved. After that, a part of the recorded material was stolen from the room where it was kept, and there were also problems with the schedule of actors who had obligations on other sets. After all that has befallen them, director and screenwriter Adam McKay stated that there is no chance of shooting a third sequel, and who knows why it is good.
The problem with this sequel is that it is torn in between so much that the final product turns out to be worryingly bad. Starting as a kind of parody of shows that deal with news, time passes as a parody of himself with a rather weak romantic story, bad comic sequences and visibly weaker chemistry between the actors. The script tries to keep the viewer’s attention in all possible ways by inserting rather unnecessary parts (a sequence with a shark), but unfortunately it achieves the opposite effect. One of the praised parts is near the end, when many famous faces appear in their cameo roles, and that would be about it.
The jokes uttered by Ron Burgundy are the work of Will Ferrell himself and range from worryingly bad to worryingly boring. Although I’m not a moral bunch and I know how to enjoy incorrect humor full of stereotypes and exploitation, Ron Burgundy’s tricks just made me feel the transfer of shame and wonder what age they were intended for. The impression is further spoiled by irritation with characters, such as Burgundy’s son, and certain subplots, such as Brick’s (Steve Carell) love story. Brick is an irritating character in himself, but on this occasion he surpassed himself. Paul Rudd seems rather uninterested, and one of the rare acting pluses is Greg Kinnear in the role of Veronica Cornigston’s new husband, as well as the episode of Harrison Ford.
This film can get a passing grade if you are a fan of meaningless comedies that shoot high, but their range is still low. In the second case, you will like it if you turn off your brain and dedicate yourself to it as a two-hour series of shots that serve to kill time. In other cases, skip it.
