Fellman's Movie Reviews

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is a 2013 comedy starring Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner, and Christina Applegate. It is the sequel to the first Anchorman movie from 2004, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy. This film takes place in the 80s, as opposed to the 70s as in the first movie. And it is about the rise of 24-hour news networks all over television and the saturation of news throughout the market.  

Like most sequels, this isn’t as good as the first movie. It has its own story, of course. But at the same time, it also tries to bring back all of the things that made the first movie so popular. It tries to take the most famous jokes and reuse them to essentially get cheap pops from the audience. The most obvious example is the news team scene near the end of the movie. It’s literally just a recreation of the same scene from the first movie, only extended. It’s just rehashing a gag. Austin Powers did the same thing over the span of two sequels as each one of them got worse.  

This movie does have some funny parts, though. Not as many as the first one does. But the characters are still the characters when it comes to the script. Brick has a girlfriend who is just as stupid as he is. And it makes for some hilarious moments. I don’t know if that would go over well today, laughing at retarded people. That probably didn’t age well in the scope of our PC culture. But they’re still some funny scenes.  

Ron’s blatant and overt racism when he goes to dinner with his station manager’s family is one of the most cringeworthy and entertaining scenes in the movie. And once again, another scene that probably wouldn’t have aged well in our current humorless society. I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but it’s a shame you can’t make movies like this anymore. Where people are making racial jokes and jokes at the expense of handicapped people. These things are funny. If you can’t laugh at life, what are you going to laugh at? 

But I digress. Ron spends a good portion of the movie blind, and I feel like that really slowed the movie down, and it took a real left turn. The whole “blind” angle really dragged along in my opinion. And am I the only one who was just annoyed by how bad the little kid was at reading his lines? Like, I don’t know if they were doing that on purpose, or if that’s just the best they could do. Because if they were doing that on purpose, and it was supposed to be a joke, it was the least funny joke of the entire movie. And there were some bad jokes in the movie. 

But nonetheless, it’s still a pretty good movie. So, yeah. Go and see Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. It’s not as good as the first one. But as far as sequels go, what is? It’s still a good enough follow-up to one of the best comedies in the last 20 years. And it’s a good enough time in itself. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…