I can’t
lie, I may be biased for my obsession with the original Anchorman, but I
thought Anchorman 2 was even better. It starts out with the same news team
trying to get the gang back together, to star on a 24 hour news channel. The
team consists of Will Ferrell (Ron Burgandy), Steve Carell (Brick), Paul Rudd
(Brian Fantana), and David Koechner (Champ Kind). The movie starts out so
solid, cracking jokes about Paul Rudd’s character becoming a cat photographer,
David Koechner’s selling bat wings and telling people it’s chicken, and Brick
attending his own funeral…thinking he’s dead. I think what makes the movie so
solid is the fact that it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense at all. It is just a mash
up of jokes and random celebrity appearances (including the wonderful Kristen
Wiig).
SORRY IF
I’M SPOLING IT
Anyway,
they proceed to have ‘beef’ with another news team, until Ron quits, moves to a
lighthouse, and takes in a shark named Doby. This scene consists of a full children’s
choir singing a song about Doby’s future life, and how he will miss him
forever. Oh yeah, Ron also becomes blind for a couple months, then, gets a very
simple surgery that proves he no longer is. The movie has a lot of controversy due
to the racial jokes, however the cast and director are both completely not
racist, they were just trying to portray that time period in a joking manner. After
all, comedies always take risks. The movie is full of countless jokes such as
Brick thinking he has no legs because he was in front of a green screen, the
bus tipping over in slow motion, and the appearance of many beloved stars,
including some of my favorite, Amy Pohler and Tina Fey. Oh, and Kanye West
shows up too.
I got the
privilege to see an early screening of the movie along with meeting the
director, Adam McKay. He was an amazing man, because he was so normal and
chill. He told us about how, the only way he makes up his jokes is, “being at a
table with a bunch of idiots and doing what we can.” He also said, “we tried to
get a dragon breathing fire, but I couldn’t afford it, so I made John C. Reilly
as the ghost of Stonewall Jackson. That ended up being fine for me.” Meeting
him made me realize how normal he was, and how he just wants to do something to
make the rest of the world laugh.