It’s been out a few days now and I am shocked - shocked, I say! - that there doesn’t appear to be a thread on this.*
I went to see it earlier this week and absolutely loved it. I’m a huge fan of the original and thought the sequel was equally funny, if possibly a touch long (there’s a sequence about 2/3rds of the way through the movie which I thought didn’t really add much and could easily have been cut without affecting too much).
Obviously, the Anchorman films are not intended to be Great Art, but given the inherently silly nature of the movies I still thought this was still very good, albeit with less apparent improvisational stuff and ad-libbing than the original.
So, anyone else out there seen it yet, and what did you think?
*Cue someone coming in with a link to the Anchorman 2 thread which didn’t show up in a search or anything when I looked, of course.
Just saw it, and all I can say is that I’ll agree to disagree with you about the merits of this particular movie. Both the gf an I liked the first one a lot, and nether one of us cared for this.
I thought there was a lot of probably unnecessary fan wankery (clearly trying too hard for absurd one-liners and/or completely rehashing stuff from the first movie…) But overall I enjoyed it and laughed quite a bit, which is more than I can say for 99.99% of comedies released in any given year.
I saw it today and that sums up how I felt. I really like the first one, and the “Wake Up Ron Burgundy” sister movie (I actually like it better). This one was long and many scenes felt rehashed and I just wanted to skip them. By the fight scene I was rolling my eyes and praying for the movie to be over. But… I laughed in nearly every scene. Some scenes were rehashed stuff that was taken to absurd lengths just for a laugh, and it got them. It’s not as slick and well put together as I wanted, but it was funny.
OP, what was the sequence about 2/3rds of the way through that you didn’t like?
I think it’s worth bearing in mind I didn’t say it was a better film - just that I thought it was as funny as the original, and I stand by that. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much at a movie in the theatre. Sure, a lot of the stuff was obvious or re-hashed, but it was still hilariously funny all the same, I thought.
There’s a sequence where Jack [del]Lime[/del] Lame throws an extension cord onto the ice-skating ring, causing Ron to fall, hit his head and go blind. Ron then ends up living in an old light house and there’s something like 15-20 minutes of jokes about how stupid he is without his sight and how he simply cannot seem to get his head around the concept of using his other senses.
I get where they were going with that sequence but I honestly think it added nothing to the film and could have easily been handled in a different (and better) way. It seemed to me like they’d put so much work into filming that sequence they felt they had to leave it in for some reason.
I figured that was what you were talking about. Right before that scene, I thought the movie was probably nearly over, then that happened. I liked the part where his friends visited, that was hilarious. But then Veronica showed up and that whole scene/subplot just kept going.
The sequence seemed forced and contrived to fit the 1st movie’s arc with Ron’s fall from grace except the first movie’s conflict came much more natural and organic that the 2nd movie’s came off hamfisted - especially in comparison. Then it got even worse with parallels, culminating with the
I’m a big fan of the first one, and thought the sequel was a mess, albeit one that was quite funny at times.
My beefs:
too long; snipping the 15 minutes or so wasted on the blind-in-the-lighhouse segement would be a good start. There’s a much better 90-minute movie hiding in here somewhere.
the Linda Jackson character had no role in the film other than to be black
Kristin Wiig’s character was cringe-inducing, and too much Brick in general
General flabby pointlessness. Anchorman, outbursts of nutty randomness aside, is a pretty lean and focused film, with a character-driven through-line. This one, while clearly having similar aims (the state of news media), got bogged down in excess and too many sub-plots.
That said, there were many, many funny bits (my favorite: “It’s made of mongoose fur, so it doesn’t work”), but the whole is less than the sum of the parts.
The bit with his friends was hilarious and I got the strong impression they left the entire sub-plot in there because that bit was so funny they didn’t want to waste it by leaving it on the cutting-room floor.
As I said before, Anchorman 2 isn’t great art - but it’s going to be a long time before I can see a fried chicken place and not want to ask if they serve “Chicken of the Cave” there.
