Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
I have just got back from Anchorman 2 and wanted to get my thoughts down while they formed in my laughter filled head.
The good news is my brain is scrabbling to remember all the really great lines and bits in the movie, this means there were, thankfully, lots of them. The second thing I should point out is that I could watch the Channel 4 news-team play tiddlywinks for 2 hours and be happy. So I am definitely a soft sell member of this movies key target audience of loyal Anchorman fans.
Bare that in mind and make of it what you, inevitably, will.
So, continuing with the good, the first 30-45 minutes of the movie, the getting the boys back together and the establishing of the key story elements are absolutely fantastic. Hilarious, well played and a great 'welcome back' to the world of Burgandy. After the joyously strong opening, the film struggles a bit without a strong, 3 act structure to hang the jokes on but it is still very funny. However the laugh count has reduced from 3 every minute to 1 or 2 big laughs every 10 minutes.
Much like McKay's and Ferrell's films The Other Guys and The Campaign, Anchorman 2 has a fairly blatant satire at its core of the 24hr news cycle. It conflicted me a little because while I will never ever knock comedies that try and make a point, I am not sure it belongs or fits well with the Burgandy and news team characters. The joke of the first film was an acutely realised absurd pomposity and arrogance of four, highly damaged male characters and the reckless decade they inhabit. That is somewhat missing here as they aren't really battling anything here or confused by anything. The characters in the sequel just go through a series of rises and falls, stumbling through comedy sketch after sketch, always with an eye on the satire of the absurdity of shitty cable news, or with an eye to telling a joke and, often, beating it to death, but with very little regard for a story. So the first film comes off looking like it had an actual structure and while it, too, has many ludicrous and surreal flights of fancy, the story is always moving forward. This sequel, by comparison, is more like the 'unofficial-only-on-dvd' sequel Wake Up, Ron Burgundy, a movie compiled (rather than planned) using different takes, cut scenes and a whole removed sub plot from the first film. This is not to disparage it, just an attempt to vocalise what this film IS.
The sequel, like the first, shot two movies worth of footage and the first rough cut was 4hrs long. By a process of test screenings, private screenings and tinkering we get the finished result. Although I hate test screenings, I am sure this was the same on the first film, it's just in that case they had not one but two 3 act structured stories they could use. In Anchorman 2, it feels like, they, probably, just picked the funnier stuff; Whether it made sense or had a flow to it, or not.
Anchorman, at times, is a weird movie but just like Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, Anchorman 2 is weirder. There's a whole sequence in the middle of the film set around a lighthouse that is just bizarre and not always laugh-out-loud funny bizarre but always intriguing, surprising and weird. Ferrell and McKay, given the chance to finally make the sequel have gone a bit hog wild in parts. It feels like several of the more left-field funny or die sketches strung together. The ending, too, takes some of the reality bending concepts of the first film and explodes them up to 22 (twice as much as 11). Again, because of the way this was edited and put together, the direction seems less focussed and pleasing than McKay has achieved in something like, the relatively normal by comparison, Step Brothers, for example. Not that I cared too much. In fact I welcomed it. McKay and Ferrell as a team are experimental, weird, wonderful, intelligent, odd, satirical, surreal and just damn funny but the mainstream eat it up. Possibly because they're also delightfully silly but I like to think that the mainstream gets a bit starved for crazy shit sometimes and so embraces people like Ferrell to make sure the scale doesn't tip too far into Blandville.
In terms of the performances the film is, honestly, the Ron and Brick show. This isn't a huge concern however as Ferrell and, especially, Carrell slip back into the roles as if they'd never been away. It's a little sad, however, that Veronica, Fantana and Champ get little to do once the initial 40mins is up. As for the new additions to the cast it's really only Kristin Wiig that gets to match the madness of the men, James Marsden is sort of miscast in the role. I've never really liked him much and, while he certainly looks the part, is no match for the others around him in the comedy stakes. He tries his best and doesn't stink up the joint but there are plenty who could've played it better.
The last point to make is that Anchorman 2 does suffer from the Austin Powers/Waynes World syndrome of recycled gags, or in this case it's more like welcome referential humour nodding at particular character tropes or gags of the first film and either expanding or changing them in some way. This is not over done and it's not grating but it's definitely there. Most of the time it's welcome and even, by a weird area of human nature and humour that loves familiarity, demanded, so don't worry but it was definitely worth mentioning.
All that being said and I realise this review may have sounded negative in parts, I loved the film. It's the weirdest, most experimental and silliest mainstream Christmas comedy and sequel since Gremlins 2 and it's funny. If, like me, you have watched Anchorman and Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie a lot and just want to spend more time with those guys, you won't be disappointed and there's enough to make the uninitiated chuckle too, though they will, probably, have no idea what's going on. The nice thing is that they have filled the scene with lots of in-gags and sight jokes that will lend itself to delightful 2nd, 3rd, 4th viewings and so on. There's also been talk of releasing the other 2 hrs of this film as an alternative version so, I imagine, the DVD/Blu-Ray set of this will be a never ending treasure trove of great lines and ludicrous scenarios.
Time to cherish a movie like this, even with its flaws. because studios just don't bet on weird ideas like this anymore, as can be attested to by the, quite frankly, odd array of really shitty film trailers which preceded this.
7.5 out of 10
Dinner for Schmucks - 28th January 2011
With the critical mauling this film took and with the remake factor, you maybe screaming at the blog saying 'well why the blazers did you watch this rubbish in the first place!' or you may use more expletives and less British slang than that in your every day speech but either way, let me defend my position.
Basically it comes down to three things:
Firstly it was a snow/sick day, there wasn't much else going on and on days like that I fancy mindless comedy, secondly I like both the lead actors and all the cameo actors as well and thirdly, often if a film is as terrible as this one was made out to be in the general printed press, I confess to a slight weakness for wanting to see films like that, partly to see how, sometimes, a group of popular people can put a foot so wrong and partly because I don't believe the press half the time. How can a film with Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell be all that bad, really? I don't really need to list their remarkable resumes do I? Ok so I wasn't all that bothered by Carrell in Date Night and I didn't see How Do You Know and I hear it was pretty bad but apart from that they are usually both, good for a laugh.
I will say one more thing before the review, am I the only one who was sort of expecting a Paul Rudd backlash but really glad it hasn't happened? because he is usually the sort of person that generally people get sick of pretty quick, either that or start saying 'I hate Paul Rudd' just to be different but I, personally, think he's brilliant.
He has aligned himself with all the right groups of comedians from the David Wain/State group, to the Judd Apatow stable and also is a vocal fan of British comedy such as Little Britain, amongst others. He also seems to have remained pretty down to earth, which is often a good sign to. So where as I can completely understand people getting sick of Seth Rogen, the voice alone was enough along with his lack of range, I think what keeps people coming back to Paul Rudd is that he is handsome enough for women to like him but goofy and male enough for the men not to turn against his handsomeness, find out where he lives and en masse turn up and urinate through his mail slot.
As for the film, what the hell were all those reviewers going on about?! While it was in no way as genius, original or as funny as Anchorman it does remind me of that situation where a big group of people just didn't seem to get the joke.
Now I haven't seen the original (I know! I will!) but it struck me that firstly, they tried really hard to make it a genuinely amusing and slightly surreal farce in a very European tradition and secondly, they did try to give it a fair amount of social commentary and even depth below the very superficial yet, often times, hilarious surface.
In case people don't know it's about a guy who, in order to get ahead in business, has to find an idiot to come to a special dinner hosted by his work superiors and obviously, in the process has his life pulled apart, realises the truth of the matter, comes to learn real values and then proceeds to put his life back together with said idiot in toe.
The curious thing about this film was how much better it was than the trailer. It feels like, having read some of the negative reviews that they were reviewing the trailer and not the film because after seeing the trailer, I too felt that this band of modern comedians had wildly missed the mark and finally all banded together to make a bad film, however, in my household, a dumb farcical comedy starring people you like has two jobs:
1. To make you laugh
and
2. To make sure you still like the people by the end of the film that you liked at the beginning of the film
Dinner for Schmucks, I am glad to say, succeeded on both counts.
Now were there weak moments? sure, of course, there was bound to be some, for example, David Walliams is not as funny as he thinks he is, not all of the final collection of idiots were as laugh-out-loud as they could've been but sadder than that, the character that the marvelous Jermaine Clement played grew a little tiresome by the end.
All in all though the film had some really inspired flights of creative lunacy, a great pace, Steve Carell, along with Zach Galifanakis in a bonkers cameo, were very very funny, the film juggled the surreal, the light and, sometimes, the very black humour well and the farce, for me, never became annoying and never gave me occasion to shout "No! no please don't do that! no!" as someone did something obviously stupid to a vintage car/house/work of art (as is so often the cliche with these things).
As I started with Mr.Rudd, I will end with a comment about him. while he was perfectly fine in this film and played a good semi-straight man with the right dose of charm and timing, he is better than this role.
He is at his best when he is playing an actual character, like the amazing and smooth Brian Fantana from Anchorman, complete with comedy tache, or the grumpy, world hating and quick witted energy drink salesman in Role Models. At his best, his straight man schtick is the awkward, ridiculous nickname spouting, bass slappin' real estate agent in I Love You Man but at its worst it can be a little dry, flat and bland, which, in the case of Dinner for Schmucks is of course to do with the script but also so that he is the sane little eye of the big crazy storm, if he had a wacky character too then there really would be no one for the audience to hitch their wagon to.
Still, I could do with more Fantana sytle roles for Rudd and less cookie cutter romantic leads.
All that being said, maybe I went in with low expectations, maybe it works better on the small screen or maybe I watched in such a stupidity induced stupor that I wasn't thinking straight but I enjoyed it and would even go as far as to recommend it.
7 out of 10 fake cheeses in a stuffed mouse diorama