Title: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)

Director: Adam McKay (Step Brothers)

Cast: Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Meagan Good, Christina Applegate, Harrison Ford, Kristen Wiig, Greg Kinnear

Plot: The Channel 4 News Team lead by the ever young Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) have been disabandoned  but have a chance to reunite and take the news world by storm when they are offered a job as members of the worlds first dedicated 24 hour news channel. Expect news anchor fights, jazz flute, a baby shark and celebrity cameos galore.

“Who the hell is Julius Ceasar? You know I don’t follow the NBA!”

Review by Eddie on 15/01/2014

Making a sequel to a beloved comedy is no easy task, look at almost any comedic sequel for example of this, so when news broke in 2012 that there would indeed be a follow up in the life and times of news anchor Ron Burgundy it was meet by much trepidation along with some genuine excitement to see where the team would take the material that made such impacts on all careers of those involved. Well ladies and gentleman it’s time to report on the lead story, is Anchorman 2 worthy to play the jazz flute?

It’s safe to say that Anchorman 2 has a extreme amount of laughs and an extreme amount of miss fires, but there is no doubt that despite not having the quite the charm of the original it is a very entertaining follow up and easily one of, if not the most funny movie of last year. The fact that Anchorman 2 works so well is due to the inhabitation again of its 4 leading men. Ron Burgundy would be nothing without the great support of Brian, Champ and the again show stealing Brick who gets many of the films best laughs. It’s hard to picture a better team in comedies of recent times than the actors here and director McKay does a good job of holding things all together despite an excessive run time and lacklustre story.

The original Anchorman in no way had a ground breaking story but compared to what number 2 dishes up it seems like a David Lynch type opus. With a running time of almost two hours, an uninteresting story makes audiences enjoyment hard to keep up and the film would of benefited with a trimming of 20-30 minutes. Other aspects that don’t work well in the films favour also are the inclusion if new additions Kristin Wiig, Megan Good and Australian network boss Kench Allenby played by Josh Lawson. All these actors and their characters feel tacked on and don’t really complement the movie in a significant way.

With these criticisms clearly laid out it’s still hard to completely bash a film that has such a disbandment for structure or sense that it really needs to be up to the viewer to just go along for the ride and laugh at just how silly and surreal almost everything in this movie is. In the end any movie that features a pet shark, fried bats and Brick Tamland has my vote of approval. Stay classy San Diego.

3 and a half sparklers out of 5