Anchorman 2 (film review)

    

Why don't y'all go back to your homes on Fools Island

     Having seen the original a day before the inevitable sequel on Dec. 23rd, I had no expectations for its sequel, knowing that it's a bigger, louder version from its predecessor; and, well, I was correct on the louder part. Sequel number 2 is set in the 1980s, where Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Appelgate) are married with a new news job in New York City as a duo tandem for WBC. Of course, ego gets the better of the two, causing a rift in the relationship. Veronica ends up as the first female anchor and Burgundy is searching for a job. Of course, Ron ends up back on his feet, and becomes an anchor for a 24-hour news station, though, alas; it's for a bad time slot.

     Clearly, the film has been promoted heavily to establish the brand to more than the core Anchorman fans that awaited 9 years since the original film. Burgandy has been making the rounds on ESPN, Dan Patrick's radio show, Chrysler, and so on. Yet, when you're promoting a character such as this, you'd expect laughs to come easy, right? Nope. Aside from a crack joke (I mean, it's the 1980s & Ronald Reagan was president, so, of course crack would be a subject here) and some subject matter concerning the state of media, much of Anchorman 2 attempts to rekindle all of the lore of the original, but there's just too much bad here for me to care about here. The new characters don't do much, either, not because they aren't convincing, they don't do enough to change the movie at all. Nothing here requires any reinventions of comedy, but so much of it tries too hard to impress. Speaking of which, there are so many cameos sent to save this film; but, at least, that what it felt like to me, anyway. They’re constant, and take away too much from an already tapped-out formula.

      The main characters seem to be going through the motions, which left me in a state of deja vu. The rest of the cast does it part and there are a bunch of cameos to keep people invested into the film, but, after that, not much else besides a comedy that's too formulaic for its own good. Also, the attempts at racial humor pretty much fall flat because the jokes aren't that funny. Anchorman 2 is pretty much for the devotees of Ron Burgandy's glorious mustache; otherwise, it's so damn bad and that waiting nine years was, simply, a bad choice.