1 9 8 0. TV News anchor Ron Burgundy is fired, so he leaves his wife Veronica and 6-year old son. However, Ron is offered a job at a new, 24-hour network, GNN, so he assembles his team of friends to support him: Champ, Brian and Brick. They are given the worst time slot, from 2 AM to 5 AM, yet they broadcast patriotic news promoting a biased, flattering portrayal of America, earning them huge success. Ron is initially apprehensive towards his boss, Linda Jackson, because she is black, but they eventually have an affair. During an victory ice skating parade, Ron falls on his head and is left blind. Victoria returns to nurture him, and Ron becomes humble. After a surgery gives Ron his eyesight back, he is offered his news anchor job back, but he refuses to be with his family.
This sequel to “Anchorman”, filmed 9 years after the original, is a peculiar experience: equally as funny as the 1st film, less quotable, less coherent, yet more attentive. The dumb hero Ron Burgundy actually grows as a character in the last 30 minutes, obtaining almost a sort of new dimension of humbleness, compassion and wisdom, whereas the director Adam McKay for the first time showed a more ambitious approach in the satirical subplot of journalism showing only what the viewers want to hear for the sake of ratings, reminiscent of “patriotic news” of Fox News and RT, which already hinted at his socially critical greater later films “The Big Short” and “Vice”. The disparate jokes are scattered throughout the film, with hundreds of puns and wacky dialogues tickling the viewers until they will burst out laughing at a certain point. Everything is improvised and episodic, and some of these concoctions are so ridiculously over-the-top or stupid that even the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker trio would tell McKay to tone it down a notch. Some of the most hilarious jokes "out-of-nowhere" include Brick's funeral until Brick shows up, so everyone tries to persuade him he is not dead ("Brick is dead!" - "He's not dead. You're Brick!" - "Brick, it's you!"); TV commercial where Brick leans forward to a table to actually bite as much butter as he can; Ron's comical singng the sweet, innocent song "Dobbie" while the titular shark emerges its head from the sea; Sacha Baron Cohen giving a stand-out theatrical line as a BBC News reporter ("In the name of Margaret Thatcher, I sentence you to death!"). Not all gags work (the final bizarre fight involving cameos from Jim Carrey to Will Smith just doesn't ignite), since some are just too stupid or poorly thought out, yet even some of the weakest jokes still sound better than some other comedies.
Grade:++
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