BEFORE: Well, I'm finally getting out to the movie theater today, 11 days later than planned, but we're going to make it happen. I could have linked to this film from any one of this week's films, but the optimal thing for the chain was to link from "Wreck-It Ralph" via John C. Reilly, who has a cameo in this film.
THE PLOT: With the 70s behind him, San Diego's top rated newsman, Ron Burgundy, returns to take New York's first 24-hour news channel by storm.
AFTER: This is a dumb film, let me just say that right off. But it's a dumb film that knows it's dumb, and revels in being dumb, kind of like the "Naked Gun" films. It's not setting out to make any larger point, or some commentary about humanity, it's just striving to be funny by being dumb. The question becomes, is it too dumb or too self-aware about it's own dumbness?
I noticed the main characters represent four different flavors of dumb - you've got the egotistical delusional dumb in Ron Burgundy, the suave cocksure bravado dumb of Brian Fantana, the clueless racist dumb of Champ Kind, and the just plain low-IQ mental defectiveness of Brick Tamland.
I suppose after the huge hype this film got in early December, there's no way the movie could have lived up to its own self-promotion. And there was apparently no way it could be as funny as the first "Anchorman", or chart a course that was too far off of the original film's structure. Ron Burgundy succeeds, Ron Burgundy fails, he goes on a quest of self-enlightenment and then returns to glory again. They even maintained many of the original film's bits, just replacing scotch with crack and cologne with condoms, to reflect the early 1980's setting.
What's new is adding a son, little Walter Burgundy, and once the band, err, news team gets back together, placing them at a new 24-hour news channel, an obvious poke at CNN called GNN. There's a telling look at the beginning of tabloid journalism, with Ron accidentally creating the rubbernecking effect by airing a live car chase to boost ratings. And the use of patriotism to create a news fervor suggests that he predated Bill O'Reilly and Jeff Beck by a few years - all completely tongue-in-cheek, of course.
Don't get me wrong, I love my news mixed with comedy - once I got used to a steady diet of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and SNL News, it's hard to go back to watching the stuff that doesn't make me laugh while informing me at the same time. The straight stuff is too depressing, like drinking decaf coffee.
So I can't be expected to take a film serious when it refuses to take itself seriously, right? I suppose that they did manage to move the characters forward a bit, with Brick finding love and Fantana actually filing a serious investigative report, and Ron Burgunday becoming slightly more self-aware, learning to put family before his career, but that's about it. Other than that, it was more of the same, while simultaneously also being less than the original. Why repeat the "news battle royale" scene from the first film, only to make it 20 times more outrageous? Funny but also too over-the-top.
You could say this continues my theme, since Ron goes through a crisis of identity, having to determine what kind of anchor he's going to be, and whether it's more important to be an anchorman or a family man, but then I kind of feel like I'm giving this story a bit too much credit. It was good for a few laughs, but now I'm glad I didn't kick the year off with it.
Also starring Will Ferrell (last seen in "Dick"), Steve Carell (last seen in "Seeking a Friend For the End of the World"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Wanderlust"), David Koechner, Christina Applegate (last heard in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Changing Lanes"), Meagan Good, James Marsden (last seen in "Hop"), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "All Good Things"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Green Zone"), with cameos from Harrison Ford (last seen in "Cowboys & Aliens"), Fred Willard, Chris Parnell, Sacha Baron Cohen (last seen in "Hugo"), Marion Cotillard, Will Smith (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Kirsten Dunst (also last seen in "Dick"), Jim Carrey (last seen in "Mister Popper's Penguins"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Mean Girls"), Amy Poehler (ditto), Liam Neeson (last heard in "A Christmas Carol"), Vince Vaughn (last seen in "The Watch"), Drake and Kanye West.
RATING: 5 out of 10 teleprompters
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