ANCHORMAN 2 THE LEGENDS CONTINUES

SYNOPSIS –After being fired from his job Ron Burgundy must fight to reclaim his spot as top newsreader. When making a comedy sequel the worst thing you can do is “more of the same”. That’s not to say you can’t have many of the same elements return, but you need to give the audience something new and original. Anchorman 2 does a bit of both; there are new jokes and situations but a lot of treading over familiar ground. Not all of the new innovations are jokes, the setting is interesting with Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrel) creating the modern hype-driven news and having to deal with the consequences. The problem, when you have a film as insane and random as the first Anchorman film, is that coming up with something new can be a bit hit and miss. Hence some of the jokes work and some feel very forced and fall a bit flat. Most however work a lot more - like the giving the childlike Brick (Steve Carell) and equally mentally-vacant, a love interest. Or having the chauvinistic Ron (Will Ferrel) be dumbfounded to have a woman take the dominant role in the relationship. Steve Carell deserves major credit for brilliantly delivering gibberish lines with such utter conviction that his courtship of Chani (Kristen Wiig) is one of the film’s main highlights. Their “date” is one of the best examples of cringe comedy and will probably go down as having one of the most unique settings for a romantic encounter. The film starts to wander a bit in the middle and begins to feel like it’s losing focus (yes even in a nuts comedy like this). Luckily this turns out to be building up to one of the funniest and insane movie climaxes I have ever seen. Frustratingly I can’t tell you much of anything about it lest I ruin the jokes or take away from the total randomness. What I think I can safely say without fear of contradiction is you’ll never see it coming. FINAL VERDICT 6/10 surprisingly follows on well from the original and though not everything works enough does to put a smile on your face