Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

 

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is the 2013 sequel to 2004's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. It is directed by Adam McKay and brings back all the main cast members, including Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, and Christina Applegate. The new additions to the cast include Kristen Wig, James Marsden, Greg Kinnear, Megan Good, and Vince Vaughn. The sequel sets the cast in the 1980s. In this movie, Ron Burgandy's (Will Ferrell) career is in a rut while Veronica's (Christina Applegate) is flourishing. Ron ends up at GNN (a riff on precisely what you think), a new 24-hour news network. He becomes a hit in the late-night timeslot, and hilarity (sometimes) ensues. There are two versions of the movie, the theatrical cut and an R-rated cut that adds 25 minutes of running time to the movie and has many harder-edged jokes.

The Blu-ray's A/V quality is very good and includes many extras. The extras include a commentary track on the R-rated version of the movie, about an hour of behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes, a portion of the table read of the movie, a two-part gag reel, deleted scenes, and over an hour and a half of extended and alternate scenes. So, you get a lot of bonus features if you like watching them. Overall, the movie is good but not as good as the first. It does have some funny moments for sure, and Christina Applegate is great in it, but I do not think it is as consistently funny as the first movie was. The main and supporting cast members were all great in their respective roles and the movie includes a bunch of character actors that you see in many of the SNL comedies and Apatow's movies. There are also a bunch of cameos from A-listers, including Will Smith, Liam Neeson, Amy Poehler, Kirsten Dunst, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, and more. The movie was definitely commercialized and did copy some from the first movie, but in general, I would say if you liked the original, you will probably like this one too.