Monday 6 January 2014

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues - Worth the wait?

The first time I saw Anchorman, I was not overly impressed. It was sort of funny but a little too haphazard for my liking. Over time, I came to love it and learned to embrace the haphazard, zany and random comedy moments. Talk of a sequel abounded for quite some time and I was excited when I heard that it was finally coming to fruition. The build up was extraordinary, with promotions ongoing for what seemed like years. We Irish were subjected to many personalised promotional videos, from topics like Love/Hate to our dear Taoiseach 'Edna' Kenny, as well as an appearance on the Late Late Show (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who would have loved Will Ferrell to keep Ryan Tubridy's chair for a little bit longer). With all the hoopla, and with inital reports being quite mixed, I was very intrigued to see the next installment to make my own mind up.

No such thing as spolier alerts when it comes to a movie like this in my opinion; even if I told you some of the random twists, it would not make sense out of context...possibly not even in context. There's the traditional over-exaggerated inflated sense of self-importance from Ron, some questionable comments and actions from Champ, some more inappropriate (and some of the funniest) lines from Brian and plenty of the obscure and seemingly random from Brick. Brian did steal the show for me a little; he doesn't say a hell of a lot but he is high-larious throughout. Did I mention I might have a mild crush on Brian Fantana? Not Paul Rudd though...must be the moustache or one of my favourite lines 'I gave her a whole Brady Bunch of crabs'.

One thing that I actually really enjoyed in retrospect is the transition into 24 hour news and how the original news team bring their ratings up. Questions asked such as 'how are we going to fill 24 hours with news stories' lead to the team sensationalising stories that are not really news worthy. When Ron uses a 3 hour broadcast to cover a high speed car chase and people eat it up, it did make me wonder if that's how it actually happened. Maybe there is a real life Ron Burgundy out there to blame for the hours of drivel that we have to trawl through on TV to get to any sort of worthy programming. I probably could have googled it to find out but well, you know. Much better to print my own opinions and let some clever person point out the mistakes later!

Moral of the Story - I may have veered off the point a bit in terms of reviewing but this movie will be enjoyed far more with a few beers, or even some other mind altering substances (not that I'd know anything about that) as well as good friends with the same sense of humour as yourself. Not everyone will find it funny when Ron keeps repeating 'black...blaaack' when he meets his African American female boss for the first time. Although I certainly did ;)

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