Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

NO SPOILERS 
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

Stranger Than Fiction - 3rd May 2011

If I was a cynic and I guess I can be sometimes, I would say that this film is one of those films that occasionally gets through the formulaic cookie cutter Hollywood machine, almost so they can prove that what they do is still artistically viable, but in their own way these sorts of films are just as formulaic.
They call them smaller, independent or arty pictures but none of those are adequate descriptions. Big named actors, looking to do quirkier and different parts and, in the case of this one, comedians looking to stretch their range, line up to participate and they are usually written and directed with that slightly smug, knowing glance at the camera where everyone involved in the project is just itching to show everyone else just how intelligent they are.
The scripts all seem like they are written by first time film students (and I know what I mean, I was one) and in their own way are riddled with cliches.
Take Strange Than Fiction, for example:
- It has the old chestnut of a chain smoking, neurotic writer with writer's block,
- The 'not as clever as it thinks it is' voiceover,
- The personification of inanimate, somewhat mundane objects,
- A protagonist who is a quiet, methodical, unassuming pleasant man who would be ok if he could just meet someone and learn to live a bit,
- The love interest who is quirky, independent, verbal and aggressive but with a heart of gold, willing to abandon all that for a man playing a rare yet hip song badly on an old guitar,
- The know it all, barmy professor who is both a friend and a father figure
- and debates on the nature of death and art.
I guess I would put it in the same category as a Charlie Kaufman film with a bit of the Truman Show thrown in for good measure. What I am just not sure about is whether it is one of those films or trying desperately to be one of those films.
What I do know is, to enjoy it and there is much to enjoy about this film, you need to get passed all that, accept it all and move on.

If you can do that then what you get is a well acted, fairly well written and wonderfully directed film that has just enough humour, just enough heart and, even, a glimmer of originality to stop itself disappearing right up its own bottom.
Clear winners and scene stealers here are Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Gyllenhaal proving you could stick her next to a bag of rodent tails and she would find a way to have chemistry with it. That you buy the relationship between her anti-war, tattooed, feminist baker and Ferrell's button down, shy IRS auditor is mostly down to her but is also, of course, in part, thanks to Ferrell.
Here he takes the, not particularly, showy and the, not particularly, comical role of the everyman struggling to come to terms with his own existence and to give it meaning and he plays it perfectly. A lot of talk is given to comedians who go straight and I wouldn't exactly call Stranger than Fiction a serious film, as it is riddled with intentional jokes, but Will Ferrell is playing the straight man of the piece to some extent. What he achieves here is a subtle and rich performance that may have root in some of his SNL or movie man-child personas but resists the urge to use any of his usual over-the-top tricks, more like on his way to becoming a latter day Bill Murray and unlike, say, Jim Carrey in the Truman Show or Eternal Boredom of a Thoughtless Mind who can't help mugging and prancing around like a buffoon.
Ferrell anchors the film perfectly and what's rare for a comedian, allows everyone else around him to be the funny ones. His performance is, very often, purely reactionary.

There is one problem I have with the whole thing though that does, towards the end, threaten to derail the film for me.
Firstly I don't understand why killing her characters at the end of her books makes Karen Eiffel, played well and unselfconsciously by Emma Thompson, a great writer but let's say that it does then why, when confronted with the reality of Harold Crick, instead of freaking out and making the decision should he live or should he die, why doesn't she simply change the name of the character in the book to Bertram Crick or Harold Crock or something?
I understand it's all a metaphor for facing the reality of death, the fact that it will come at us whether we like it or not and we might as well die for something and that's fine, the film has its cake and eats it too because they do wrap it all up neatly in the end but why make the entire plot, metaphor or not, hang on the simple task of changing one single letter.
Also at a certain point the writer goes from narrating what is happening as it's happening to being able to make things happen, like the phone ring, by typing 'the phone rings a third time'.
These inevitable plot holes, in a script such as this, are only minor niggles and actually I really enjoyed watching it this time round and laughed all the way through it.

8 out of 10 pots of hip greek yoghurt sucked up by a scruffy yet brilliant literature professor
Points from The Wife - 7 out of 10
  

Wake Up Ron Burgandy - 5th February 2011

So this is a bit of a unique curio. Less of a completed film and more a very a novel way to display out takes, deleted scenes and retakes from a film, Anchorman, which was hugely improvised in the first place and, in one way, enormously changed from the original script.

Mainly linked together with voice over and alternate takes this attempts to be the unofficial sequel to the comedy genius that is Anchorman.

I have said it before and will happily say it again to all that will listen, I believe Anchorman to be the funniest film in the last 15 years, a truly hilarious character invention and performance by Will Ferrell, his supporting cast and various cameos and the best thing Adam McKay and him will ever do. So for me the idea of there being more of that is an idea worth going with, savoring and imaging the film that could've been.

Essentially and almost unbelievably, there is a whole bank robber subplot, with crucial scenes and fairly large set pieces that was ditched in its entirety from the original film and I can only imagine that it was that stuff lying around that prompted the DVD only release of this. The plot, the cast and the scenes are resurrected here as the driving storyline behind this patchy, yet in its own way, pretty special and fairly good movie. Throw in scenes of Ron Burgundy trying his hand at being a roving reporter, a visit to his mentor Jess Moondragon, some truly inspired stuff with the team in the San Diego mountains and a borderline disturbing scene where Champ Kind, ignored mercilessly by the rest of the crew, declares in loud and raw terms his special love for Ron and you have your new film.

It's all completely slap-shot, not as polished or finessed as the footage that wound up in the finished film and some of the hundreds of jokes, inevitably, fall flat but when you consider the rolls and rolls of film that must've been shot to make both movies possible it boggles the mind box. Also, arguably, this film has more of a traditional plot! In the original, the love story obviously takes more of center stage and informs the plot arc of the picture, with the denouement in the zoo really not adding anything plot-wise to the proceedings but it is all the better for that, here when they do go back to the robbing gang and away from the Channel 4 news team, it's unfunny and you lose interest quick.

Ultimately though, if you are a DVD movie extras geek like me then you will love this innovative way to string all of the out-takes together but if you didn't much care for the original then save your breath, your money and buy something else, you know, like a gimp mask and a grapefruit or something.

Wake Up Ron Burgundy is way funnier than it has any right to be, great to see the cast happy to try just about anything and if Anchorman the special edition doesn't have enough of Papa Burgundy and the boys then pick this up and revel in silly for 2 more hours. I don't know about you but I'm sort of a big deal, my apartment smells of rich mahogany and I have many leather bound books.

7 out of 10 used coffee filters with cigarette butts sticking to them that Brick mistakes for food

Starsky & Hutch - 21st December 2010

Ok, so here was film two of my unfortunate illness-caused, sofa-bound state and despite being another film that features Vince Vaughn, it was actually one that isn't too bad actually and a little funnier than I remembered it being.
I can't honestly say I have ever sat through an episode of the original Starsky and Hutch so I can't compare anything in this with the original, which is probably a blessing because obviously I realise this is a highly comic interpretation of the original show and that means I can just sit back and laugh much in the way we all did with Dragnet back in the 80s, obviously this films closest predecessor.

This film came out just as this particular group of comedians were beginning to establish themselves as a successful group, later dubbed the frat pack, in a very similar vein as the post SNL group of Murray, Aykroyd, Candy and Martin did in the 1980s. There have been hits, misses, attempts at different genres, off the wall masterpieces discovered on DVD like Zoolander and Anchorman and serious turns in naval gazing indies like Stranger than Fiction and Greenberg. Each individual, also, has seemingly gone on to have big, multi-million dollar summer and winter blockbuster movies which may have made them very rich but has not necessarily kept them fresh or funny.

Starsky and Hutch which stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, with turns from Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman and Will Ferrell, although barely mentioned anymore (much like Dragnet) is amongst the early funny ones of this group and stands up surprisingly well a few years down the line. It has its weak spots (the cocaine/ dance off scene goes on way too long and has an unsatisfying pay off) but mostly it is a series of ludicrous sketches strung together under the banner of buddy cop comedy.
Stiller and Wilson are at their best playing absurdly stupid yet confident people in ridiculous situations and the way the film is set up, much like Zoolander, it allows both actors to play to their strengths with Stiller being the real genius of the pair, there is something about his ernest leaping about and attempts to be threatening that are just brilliant.

There is not much to say about the film really as it scarcely matters whether the plot holds up or if the acting is top notch, what matters is if it's funny and while it is certainly not as inventive or bonkers as Zoolander or Anchorman, for example,  it does have several legitimately laugh out-loud moments, even if a lot of the gags and set-ups are heavily reminiscent of scenes we've seen before in previous comedies.
It's a great touch to have Fred Williamson as the enraged seventies police captain and Snoop Dog is not above donning a silly wig and doing ridiculous scenes with the rest of them.

A fairly good and jolly way to pass the afternoon if needs be.
6.5 out of 10 prancing dragons
Points from the wife 5 out of 10

Old School - 13th September 2010

After we had finished Dead Heat (see review below), we were channel surfing and this was on Showtime on demand. I hadn't seen it in a while, the wife was game and so we sat and watched the whole thing.
I think it's a good funny film. It's not spectacular or strikingly original, borrowing heavily, as it does, from films such as Animal House and PCU but it sets out its characters, it sets out its premise and then it plays it through in a perfectly decent way.
Watching it this time around though I realised, that while everyone else does their schtick and hits all the right beats, the genius of this movie is how truly dark the story of Will Ferrell's character is and how there is no attempt, by Ferrell, to make the character likable or sympathetic. Take the performance out of a frat boy comedy and it's a clever, fairly subtle (by Will Ferrell standards) portrayal of a genuine lunatic slowly self destructing without the intelligence, memory or perception to pull himself out of his self dug hole.
I have heard SNL writer's say this about Will Ferrell, who now has sort of been relegated to just playing bumbling naive oafs or stupid braggarts, that they loved writing for him because he could always deliver the weird, perverted or black humour in a way that kept the audience on his side laughing and he was never afraid to say or do something shocking.
I think the first couple of times I watched this, and I haven't seen it a lot, I always just let it wash over me, laughed at the right places and just thought the whole thing was silly, good but silly. This time though, I was also happy to see that beneath all the Vince Vaughn jabbering, the Luke Wilson reluctant hero to smug git routine and the cast of obviously wacky characters around them that Will Ferrell was operating on a totally other level.
I know some of you are reading this and you think I am insane and I know some of you don't see and won't see it, which is, of course, fine but I also think it's a shame because I believe in this film, some of his better SNL stuff and most of the work he does with Adam McKay he does some truly inspired acting. Where as I have never felt, even in his better films, that Jim Carrey is ever operating on any other level than just simply, outwardly wacky, Will Ferrell, on the other hand, plays it straight. Even when he's running down the road naked in Old School, he plays it like a guy who honestly believes he's part of a group of guys doing the same thing and is confused, bemused and maybe even a little hurt to find out it's just him.
This is not saying he is playing it realistic either but it's a straight faced surrealistic character that hints at genuine melancholy beneath the surface, although I am sure 50% of people reading this are scratching their heads thinking "you've lost the plot man, stop over analysing this dumb comedy, are you referring to the same guy who rubs his balls on a drum kit in Step Brothers or was in the Bewitched movie?" and that's fine, I don't completely see what is so great about Star Wars particularly, not that I think it's bad, I just don't get the hullabaloo. It's each to their own at the end of the day.
Anyhew, back to the movie. Like I said at the start, I like it and think it's funny. It was right there at the start of all these, so called by some, Frat-Pack comedies before Luke Wilson fell off the face of the planet only to occasionally return to earth to star in bemusingly bad semi-comedies, before Vince Vaughn made sure he only made one film a year and that film, despite being an atrociously unfunny piece of cinematic effluent, would always make tons of cash, before Apatow went big screen and just after American Pie.
Todd Phillips, who more recently made the so-so monster smash of the summer The Hangover, directs well and keeps it all flowing nicely towards it's inevitable, misfits must trump authority ending and speaking of which, it's great to see Jeremy Piven play the crotchety, piece of filth Dean in an amusing role reversal from his laid-back, anti-authoritarian, slacker in PCU.
The weak link in all of this is the inevitable romantic sub plot with bland as beige Ellen Pompeo who could only possibly fall for our 'hero' after her current boyfriend is exposed to be a slimy philanderer but so-what, at the end of a day it was nice to revisit this movie and have a good chuckle.

7 out of 10 guilty pleasure fudge brownies
Points from The Misses 7 out of 10 guilty pleasure fudge brownies

The Other Guys - 8th August 2010

Ok, before I start my review of this particular movie, there are two things you have to know about my opinion on Will Ferrell. He is a divisive, love him or loathe him type for most but I think I have come up with a couple of things that allow me to do a little of both.

Firstly let me state that I think Will Ferrell has never been funnier than he was in Anchorman, which I count as one of the top 25 comedies of all time and secondly I think that Will Ferrell tends to be at his best when working with Adam McKay whether that is on SNL, the Funny or Die website, the Movies or his Evening with George Bush. Apart from that (and me quite enjoying Stranger than Fiction and Blades of Glory) I can see why people would retreat from his big-budget CGI crap-o-ramas and his latest sports movie of the week.

The Other Guys, thankfully, falls into the first of the Will Ferrell camps as it is co-written and directed by Mr. McKay. Out of their four movies together I thought this had some of the funniest moments in it, just behind Anchorman but before Talledega Nights and Step Brothers but isn't necessarily as consistently funny as any of them.

Basically the plus points of this action comedy are Will Ferrell (for once playing delusional and simple rather than totally stupid and idiotic), Michael Keaton (who hasn't been this funny since The Dream team), Eva Mendes (weirdly enough), the direction (although the action falls flat) and it's sublime ridiculousness (it is by far the most overtly dark and surreal of their films since Anchorman). If you like even half of his other collaborations with Adam McKay and enjoy films like Dragnet or Hot Fuzz then you are going to like this film. It was, for me, so far the comedy of the year.

One of the negatives to this film is a rather muddled plot that sort of gets in the way of all the riffing and fantastically absurd set pieces, which is odd because you'd think it would be the other way round.

This is really the first of these films to attempt to have a real plot, rather than just a flimsy concept to hang a string of jokes on but in this case it elongates an already lengthy film, slows it down in parts, confuses and threatens to derail it altogether. It was a shame because a film that could've had me leaving the cinema guffawing in delight at some of the truly hysterical one liners or the triumphant comic return to the screen of Mr.Keaton instead had me wandering out thinking 'what just happened? I don't fully get it' and thanks to those infamous, great but depressing end credits, 'right, I might as well go live in a hut somewhere and chew my own foot off because we're all doomed!'

I mean, all kudos to them for trying to whip a bit of post-financial collapse message into the whole proceedings but a message just doesn't work with their sort of comedy unfortunately and also sticks what could have been a knock-about cops and robbers movie into a certain time and place that will, over-time date the hell out of some parts of it.

Also, I don't get Marky Mark. What's all the fuss about? Maybe I haven't lived in the States long enough but where did this whole arrogant, I'm too hard, supposedly menacing attitude come from? Why do people think of him as some strong, cool, seething ton of testosterone? Don't get me wrong he is a perfectly ok actor and I have liked quite a few of his movies but I just don't get this mystique he seems to have. I know that one of the jokes of this movie is meant to be this, apparently, gruff tough guy is being surprising in a comedy but what if you just think, well he's an actor, he wears make up for a living and used to be a ridiculous white rapper? It still works and he is ok in it but it could've been anyone.

Lastly they could take a slice out of Edgar Wright's pie and sort the action out a bit. Considering the incredible shots in Talledega Nights of car crashes and explosions, the predominantly car based action here feels a tad plodding and slap-dash.

Again, for a film that I loved and laughed through as much as this one, I have blathered on about the negative quite a bit and I don't mean to make out like I didn't enjoy it because I really did. Especially the scene when their car is returned to the police station for the first time and they are told the list of stuff that happened to it whilst it was abandoned, that had me wide eyed and wide mouthed hooting like crazy person hopped up on sherbet and smack. This is definitely one I'll be buying and watching again and again. They just need to find a better editor to cut their stuff down to size and if they want to have a plot as well as chortles then they need to sprinkle the plot coherently throughout the whole thing and not just try to cram it all into the tie-up at the end.

8.5 out of 10 sunny side up eggs.

Points from the Misses - 9 out of 10 sunny side up eggs.