Time-wasting car chases. Knee-jerk jingoism. Stories on kinky sex and cute animals, weathercasters standing in the middle of hurricanes and zealots yelling at each other. Who was the idiot who came up with 24-hour cable news, anyway?
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ron Burgundy.
When we last saw the blow-dried TV star, it was the sunny '70s in San Diego. Now it's '80s Manhattan, and while he's still trying to stay classy, he has a new challenge ahead of him — heal his wounds after a bad breakup, and meet a new challenge on cable news. Can he do it?
He can once he gets the old team back.
Nine years ago, the first "Anchorman" was a genuine cult hit, one of those films — like the far more legendary "The Big Lebowski" - that only become an almost-memorized, repeat-as-needed favorite thanks to endless TV showings and DVDs.
But how do you do a sequel, after all these years?
Well, like Ron, star Will Ferrell smartly reunited the team, beginning with his fellow newsmen — playboy investigative reporter Paul Rudd, blowhard sportscaster David Koechner and Steve Carell, as the weatherman whose head is its own raging thunderstorm of odd.
And then Ferrell and director Adam McKay pushed things even further, raunchier and weirder.
Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean funnier.
Nearly ten years after the first film — and 40 or so after Ted Baxter — the clueless anchorman stuff isn't exactly fresh. Some of the film's political jabs at the right wing — they make Ron's new employer a big-bucks Australian, in case you don't get the Fox News digs — are too obvious.
The film's at its best, actually, when it puts the TV stuff to one side and just sails off on weird tangents.
Like a mad melodramatic segment where an ill Ron goes off to live in a lighthouse, and rediscovers the meaning of life by nursing a baby shark back to health. Or Carell's desperately surreal, numbly non sequitur stabs at romance with an even loonier Kristen Wiig.
But the actors all seem to be having a good time, and sometimes that's infectious — particularly in the final moments as they throw all caution (and any semblance of logic) to the wind, and end the movie with a sort of "Harry Potter" free-for-all that brings in a monsters, bikers and the ghost of Stonewall Jackson.
It all makes about as much sense as the end of "Blazing Saddles," when Mel Brooks' cowboys crashed into a movie soundstage full of high-kicking dancers. But, you know, it's funny. And although they don't always hit it, that clearly is the only bull's-eye Ferrell and McKay are aiming at.
Ratings note: The film contains strong language, sexual situations, drug abuse and some violence.
'Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues' (PG-13) Paramount (119 min.)
Directed by Adam McKay. With Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner. Opens Wednesday in New Jersey.
★ ★ ½
FOLLOW FILM CRITIC STEPHEN WHITTY ONLINE
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