When Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy was released in 2004 it became a sleeper hit and has since appeared on several “Funniest Movies of All Time” lists. Fans have had to wait nearly a decade for a sequel to see how the eponymous news anchor’s life has panned out, and what has happened to his KVWN colleagues – co-anchor Veronica Corningstone, weatherman Brick Tamland, sportscaster Champ Kind and field reporter Brian Fantana – since they worked together on San Diego's local television station in the 1970s.
Finally Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is upon us, after a huge publicity blitz. The story is set a few years later; Ron (Will Ferrell) is now married to Veronica (Christina Applegate) and they have a young son, but when she is made solo anchor for the evening news programme and he is sacked he goes off the rails, into a downward spiral and hits rock bottom in a Burgundy-esque mixed metaphor. The numerous reasons for his sacking – including swearing on air and drunkenness – are shown in a hilarious clips montage. He ends up commentating on the performing seals at a San Diego water theme park – the American equivalent of Alan Partridge doing the graveyard slot on Radio Norwich.
The story, such as it is, follows Ron's new career from zero to hero
But then Ron (famous for his "salon-quality hair") is asked by a new network, GNN, to get the old gang together as it launches a 24-hour rolling news station in New York "It'll never work"; it’s run by a maverick Australian, so we can read CNN, Fox and Sky into the social satire in a film that hits several targets spot-on. But much of the comedy comes from seeing how little the guys have developed as human beings in the intervening years; Ron is as unreconstructed as ever, throwing out sexist, racist and misogynistic barbs every time he opens his mouth, Brick (Steve Carell) is still as thick as, well, a brick (but finds a soulmate in the form of cute klutz Kristen Wiig), Champ (David Koechner) still harbours not-so-latent feelings for Ron, and Brian (Paul Rudd) still has zero judgment. “OJ Simpson, Phil Spector, Robert Blake,” he says, talking about the mates he goes on the pull with. “They call us the ladykillers.”
The story, such as it is, follows Ron's new career from zero to hero as, totally by accident, he invents a new way of covering the news, and there are some neat jokes nodding to the big stories of recent decades. The biggest laughs, though, come during an inspired (if lengthy) gag about various newscasters squaring up to each other in a huge playground fight, in which any number of stars do bad-boy cameos – Liam Neeson, Jim Carrey and Tina Fey, to name just a few.
The same Anchorman production team – director Adam McKay and producer Judd Apatow - serve up another comedy with a high joke quotient. True, much of it is extended skits and drop-in gags in a narrative that is only loosely joined at times, but the film never outstays its welcome at nearly two hours. And, while some of the satire is hitting easy targets – sexism, the tabloidisation of the news, cultural insensitivity – Anchorman 2 does it with plenty of belly laughs.
