Paramount Pictures, Apatow Productions, Gary Sanchez Productions,
Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Christina Applegate, Meagan Good, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden
Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is back, news anchor in New York City, along with his friends, Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and Champ Kind (David Koechner). Ron loses his job to Veronica (Christina Applegate) but and moves back to San Diego a broken man, and a performer at Sea World, when the chance comes to take a job at the first 24 hour news network, Global Network News (GNN). Ron puts the gang back together and they take the graveyard shift, but Ron has some ideas on how to become the biggest thing in New York since the Beatles.
I have to give one thing to this movie. This has to be the highest promoted movie in cinema history. Will started years early to bring back the Ron Burgundy character and used him at appearances everywhere. For 6 months or more there were previews, posters at the theaters, and everything you can think of to remind you that Anchorman 2 was coming out for Christmas 2013. It came out, and I’m sure it made a few bucks. IMDB gives it $50 million, with a $26 million dollar opening weekend. Not that big of a hit, and I can see why. I was kind of disappointed in this film, as it just didn’t really impress me much. Will Ferrell is doing the same schtick over and over again, and it’s starting to get old. There were some really funny lines in this film, mostly from Steve Carell and David Koechner, but Will can set off a zinger every now and then. He comes up with some off the wall things that are really funny. For that reason, It’s well worth renting this movie or watching it on TV. After all, if you’re a Ferrell fan, you gotta see it (although if you’re a fan, you probably already did). But it’s not horrible, and it’s worth taking the time to watch it, but with all the hype, it just didn’t live up to it. Perhaps you can oversell something, till it becomes something you just HAVE to see to see what all the hype is about, and then you’re always disappointed when you expect too much. I was feeling bad I missed it in the theater with all the stuff going on around the holidays, but it turns out I was happy I didn’t spend my 13 bucks on this. It just isn’t that great. So there are a lot of cameos in here, and a bunch of comedy stars doing the best they can with this, but it’s somehow too much over the top, kind of like a Three Stooges type comedy that is too much slapstick, too much cheap swear words to try to shock you, and way over the top overacting to try to be too funny. If they’d dialed it back a bit and had a bit of a better story, it would have been a better film. But then, I guess it wouldn’t be a Will Ferrell movie in that respect, and if you know the way he does his stuff, it’s more of the same. A lot more of the same.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
