Lauren Douglas
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”, is exactly the movie you think it is going to be. It continues on the story of Ron Burgundy (Will Farrell), Anchorman extraordinaire and his merry band of misfits: over sexed field reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), cowboy sport reporter Champ Kind (David Koecher) and barely functional idiot weatherman Brick Tamland (the hilarious Steve Carell).
The movie picks up with Ron and his lady love Veronica Corningstone (Christina Appelgate) as weekend news anchors at a leading channel WBC, but things quickly go to hell when Veronica is promoted and Ron is fired. After a brief (hilarious) sojourn at Sea World, Ron gets his band back together to go anchor the graveyard shift at the first 24 hour cable news channel, GNN.
From that point the movie follows on with the same humour found in the first go around. New addition Kristen Wiig shines as the ridiculous Chani, taking on the same bit done by Steve Carell. Australian Josh Lawson is solid as insane, evil media mogul Rupert Mur… sorry, Kench Allenby and Greg Kinnear (rocking a hilariously awful rats tale) reads our minds as psychologist Gary.
My personal favourite comes in the small package of Jodah Nelson, who as Ron and Veronica’s son Walter Burgundy compliments Farrell beautifully in a sequence involving a musical moment and a rehabilitated shark.
The most surprising thing to come out of the movie is the strong moral ideology presented that News if there to inform, not to entertain. It’s an idea that Aaron Sorkin has been throwing down our throats for 2 seasons of HBO’s ”The Newsroom”, but the works surprisingly well in the comedy. Indeed, within the movie we can credit Ron Burgundy for many examples of news broadcasting we now consider normal, including car chases and sensationalised stories about weight loss.
The movies 2 hour running time makes the jokes kind of wear thin after a while, but a star studded call back to the original injects some humour back into the film just before it ends and makes sure you walk out of the cinema with a smile on your face. This movie isn’t ground breaking, and certainly isn’t going to be winning any awards this season, but if you need a laugh and have a couple of hours to kill, I would highly recommend it.
Bottom line: If you liked the first Anchorman movie, you’ll like the sequel.
