Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” the sequel to the 2004 movie “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” may serve as an insightful comparison for those interested in charting the career evolution of the long partnership of Actor Will Ferrell and Director Adam McKay. The two have certainly changed in the almost decade since the original movie came out. Someone in Clown College could totally write a thesis about the transformation. No, not me, I don’t have the credentials or motivation suited to such a task. Oh, all right I’ll do it.

Back in the way back day when dinosaurs ruled the world and the Mayans had not yet arrived on their galactic starships, there were two Saturday Night Live alumni named Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Their SNL colleagues, obsessive, neurotic, and urbane New Yorkers, all of them I tell you, incessantly wrote about the trivial and not so pleasant pleasantries of daily life of people who live close or at least nearby people. But not these two for they hailed (or at least Ferrel) from a land of strip malls, culdesacs, and an almost ludicrous amount of grass fields, I mean really. It was known as “The Bubble,” for legend has it nobody from the outside ever came in and anyone from the inside who ever wanted to ‘do something’ had to leave the city limits, generally in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, a feat few ever accomplished, at least on a regular basis. But to Ferrel it was merely called Irvine, California. Out from “The Bubble” came a new kind of comedian, the Ferrel Man Child: loud, brash, and wholly absurd. But above all other lowly adjectives, the Ferrel Man Child was defined by his overconfidence. He was a man not challenged in any meaningful way by society or civilization and walked this great land like a King: that is with a deluded sense of self-importance and entitlement.

The Ferrel Man Child was first seen in the realms of cinemadom in “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” as a local anchorman in sunny 1970s San Diego. It was ripe territory for the Ferrel Man Child. The employment allowed his character to take all the credit for an entire bureaurcracy and think he deserved it too. He had a grand mustache at a time when that sort of thing was without shame. And he had a news team of enablers. Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) was the man on the street. Champ Kind (David Koechner) was sports. And who could forget dear Brick Tamlin (Steve Carell) on weather. Turns out, the man was retarded, but nobody knew for years because doing weather in San Diego takes no brains at all. It’s Sunny! Everyday!

But Hark! What’s this?!?!? Out of nowhere and not taking notes or bringing coffee was a woman, a female reporter named Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate). The original movie relied heavily on one Ferrel Man Child joke in particular: that is making Christina Applegate look as uncomfortable as possible. Ten Years later, the Legend Continues, and even though there is still plenty of deluded male chauvinism still around, the themes are an entirely different animal, like say a sneaky snake instead of a giant panda, that sort of metaphor. Starting around 2010, after one great movie about NASCAR (Talladega Nights) and one okay movie about forty-something men living with their parents (Step-Brothers) the Ferrel Man Child reinvented himself in that grand old country of satire, lampooning Wall Street (The Other Guys) and Politics (The Campaign).  

It should be said that the choice of a sequel for ‘Anchorman’ by Team Ferrel/McKay is not simply a ‘get-the-gang-back-together-for-another-paycheck’ kind of job. They chose this sequel because even though the original movie was not a satire there lay in the promise of a sequel, the good territory for it. After all, it is a decade after the 70s (that means it’s the 80s) and although dinosaurs no longer roam the Earth, there is this new thing called 24 hour NEWS. This too is ripe territory for the Ferrel Man Child. Turns out everything that is stupid and petty about the 24 News Networks is Ron Burgundy’s fault. While enjoying a breakfast buffet in the New York Headquarters of his new workplace, Ron has an idea to get more ratings. “How about instead of telling people what they need to know, we just tell them what they want to hear?” What an idea! Cut to lots of patriotic talk about how great America is, a ridiculous amount of flashy graphics, highlight reels of only home runs and touchdowns (Whammy!) and sticking Brick Tamlin outside in the middle of a hurricane. They also have the idea of using police car chases as Breaking News. Ron has the great idea of speculating on air as to who is being chased and why when he has no real information to go on. The ratings for the 24-hour news network go through the roof.

For those who liked the first movie there are plenty of sequel jokes, that is jokes that are just like the ones in the first movie but bigger. So Ron recites even more absurds warmup phrases before airtime, plays his Jazz Flute in bigger fashion, and has an even bigger newsman brawl with even more famous celebrities in cameos. That’s great as long as there is plenty of fresh material and there is plenty of fresh material, but my personal problem with it is that I happen to be regular viewer of “The Daily Show with John Stewart.” That show skewers the 24-hour news networks on a regular basis so the jokes that are supposedly fresh for Team Ferrell/McKay is actually stuff I am already familiar with. I bet though that those who don’t watch “The Daily Show” on a regular basis will find all the 24-hour news network satire on the money.

My favorite part of the movie is neither a sequel joke nor a 24 Hour news satiric piece. For me that would be the inclusion of the great Kristin Wiig as a love interest for Brick Tamlin. It’s a match made in comedy heaven. She is as big an idiot as he is if which seems impossible but hey that’s how you know that they are meant for each other. It is a little dismaying though to see Wiig in this role at all. After the critical and commercial success of ‘Bridesmaids,’ I bet that she would finally become a movie star with her own annual string of movies. Somehow though Melissa McCarthy became the breakout star of that movie and Kristin Wiig has once more been relegated to supporting roles in the movies of inferior comedians. (I don’t include Ferrell/McKay in that group. I would say they are equals in comedy). This is idiotic and makes the capitalist in me a little sad. There is plenty of money to be made on the Kristin Wiig ticket and the studios are refusing to make it due to what has to be a sexist lack of imagination. 

The weakest part of the movie deals with a series of racial jokes. Ron Burgundy’s new boss at the station is a black woman. This unfortunately is as far as her character development goes as much of the scenes she is in don’t go further than Ron’s bewilderment as to what a black woman is doing in the room. Inexplicably she likes him enough to start dating him and eventually brings him home to her classy Upper East Side African American family. Ron spends his time at the table loudly talking jive, in order to instill racial harmony you see. The black people don’t do much of anything other than gasp in shock and anger. There is something that doesn’t quite work about this scene and it is kind of been milling around humor for a while now. Let’s say you had two white guys making racial jokes about ghetto blacks. That would not be okay, right? But for some reason this is okay here because of the presence of well-dressed and educated middle class blacks looking offended. Who is the joke on here? Is it on Ron Burgundy who can’t tell that the people at the table are not the type of people he thinks they are? Or is it on the black people at the table who are made to be nothing but insulted and uncomfortable? And what does it actually say? I think it says that Burgundy is deluded because these particular black people are not poor and uneducated and thus would not be speaking jive. But it also sidesteps any recognition that there are indeed black people who are underpriviledged, in poverty, and live in violence who do speak jive. This would be especially true in 1980s NYC, which had some of the most dangerous and dilapidated ghettos in the country at that time.

How about if this were the scene? The black woman takes Ron Burgundy back to a family dinner in a scary ghetto, but Ron Burgundy mistakes the family for a version of The Jeffersons. He makes idiotic references to moving on up to the East Side and doesn’t seem to notice that people are underemployed, come from terrible schools, and that brother 15-Year-Old Keenan was shot last week in an escalating series of gang violence. Ron can even start singing the theme song at one point and declare the virtues of Reagan Era trickle-down-economics. Edgy Satire, right? And it should make everybody not just black people uncomfortable to see it. Anyway that’s just a thought. Otherwise all the other jokes in this comedy land pretty well and I look forward to the next comedy by Team Ferrel/McKay.