Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues - 2013

"Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" - 2013
Dir. by Adam McKay - 1 hr. 59 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Maybe the most thankless task any comedian can undertake is making a sequel to a hugely popular, widely successful comedy.  It's doomed to failure; comedy itself thrives on surprises, which are a lot less possible once everyone knows all of your characters and their quirks.  And most of the time, comedy sequels end up like a bad reproduction of what was great in the first place.  It was an incredible relief that "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" wasn't a bad film in itself, and even more of a relief that it was a really funny movie (if not quite up to the bar set by the first one).

Now, Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) and his news team and family are in the early 1980s, at the dawn of twenty-four hour news channels.  An early rift between Burgandy and his wife, lady anchorman Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) splits the family, and Ron ends up far worse off.  At his nadir, he's offered a job at GNN, an upstart twenty-four/seven news channel bankrolled by an Australian millionaire, Kench Allenby (Josh Lawson).  Burgandy assembles his team, and they head to New York for the launch.  Once there, they are shocked to find out that they've pulled the graveyard shift, and Burgandy makes an ill-conceived bet with the network's star, Jack Lime (James Marsden).  In a moment of desperation, Burgandy decides to give people what they want instead of what they need, which turns out to be a big boneheaded hit.

The big challenge of a sequel is how to keep the flavor of the first movie intact, and still allow room to try and surprise the audience.  In this instance, that means transplanting the core characters into a new environment, and fleshing out the movie with new characters.  This is a trade-off; one of the main delights of the first film was watching Christina Applegate bring it with the same intensity and fervor that Will Ferrell (and anyone else in that film, also) did, and their relationship is more of a back-burner deal this time around.  There is a whole new batch of co-workers with which Burgandy won't get along very well with, and a new romantic interest that is surely doomed from the very first meeting.  There's another romance this time around, between Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and Chani (Kristen Wiig), and literally each of their scenes together had me laughing uproariously.  It was to the point where Carell stole every scene he was in, and that's saying something.

On the whole, there were a lot of really great comedic scenes.  A couple of them were callbacks to the first "Anchorman," but all of the "where are they now" scenes for the news team were fantastic, too.  There just was a lot of funny material (and I wouldn't want to spoil any of it) that was funny just for the sake of being funny, but there was actually kind of a point to some of the humor as well.  While you're laughing, the point is made that all of the kinds of "news" programs that everyone claims to loathe, like celebrity news, kittens, and car chases, were probably created by rich blowhards like Kench Allenby and aggressive dolts like Ron Burgandy, and while we were all laughing at them, they took over.  Is that the entire point of the film?  No, but it's a strong subtext.

All of this adds up to a really solid comedy.  If someone watched this one first (which I suppose could happen), they probably would want to go back and see the first one, at which point they'd probably be blown away.  For a comedy sequel, the first bar that you have to clear is not wrecking the franchise, by which I mean that you can't make one so bad that it ruins the first one retroactively.  Mission accomplished.  Once that's accomplished (and it's harder than it seems, judging by the history of cinema), the question is whether or not it could stand on it's own, and I'd say "Anchorman 2" easily does that.  There's nothing quite as good here as Veronica seeing a rainbow and telling Ron, "Do me on it," but some of the Carell/Wiig stuff is close in it's own twisted way.  And after this film and the two of them voicing characters in the second "Despicable Me," there had damned well better be a full-on rom-com starring those two in the works already.  For now, they have the best scenes in a pretty good comedy, definitely one worth checking out.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

Mafia! - 1998

"Mafia!" - 1998
Dir. by Jim Abrahams - 1 hr. 23 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

One of my personal biggest cinematic disappointments came between the creation of the trailer for this film and it's release, when the title went from "Jane Austen's Mafia!" to simply "Mafia!"  The title itself is probably the single best joke that director Jim Abrahams was responsible for since "Airplane," and it was publicly left on the cutting room floor.  I don't know whose door to lay responsibility for this mistake at, and it doesn't really affect the film itself (this is not a mobster film set in costume-era England), but I'm still kind of irritated about that decision fifteen years later.

There's not much point in recounting the plot - as you might expect, "Mafia!" is a send-up of 90's gangster films like "Casino" or "Goodfellas," and even casting back further with jokes about "The Godfather" series.  The main characters are brothers Tony and Joey Cortino (Jay Mohr and Billy Burke, respectively), and their father, Vincenzo (Lloyd Bridges, in his final film).  Tony has a pair of love interests (not concurrently), in idealistic peacenik Diane (Christina Applegate) and stripper Pepper (Pamela Gidley).  And then there are a million incongruent jokes.

If you're in the mood for this type of humor, and you don't want to watch (or don't have access to) "Airplane!" or "Kentucky Fried Movie," "Mafia!" is as good as anything else from the Zuckers and Abrahams.  If you are in the mood, this film has its moments, and there are a handful of jokes that get me every time.  There are a pair of really good comebacks; one from Pepper, after having been caught sleeping with Joey behind Tony's back, and getting called a slut, she shoots back, "That's what we do.  If I was particular, I wouldn't be a slut."  Another scene, later in the film, has Tony distraught over having been passed over for leadership of the family, and being told point blank that it's because he's a loose cannon and a psychopath, responds, "And I deserve respect for that!"  Other that that, as is the norm with this style of humor, it's the death of a thousand cuts.  Each joke isn't necessarily the best thing you've ever heard, but they kind of pile up on you until you succumb to laughter.  Or you turn the movie off in frustration and irritation.

There's not a ton else to say about "Mafia!"  It's not a bad movie, but you need a taste for this sort of thing, and even then this isn't a prime example of what makes these movies fun and worthwhile.  Largely, "Mafia!" is simply Jim Abrahams doing what he does, which is wringing humor out of non sequiturs, sound effects, puns, and twisting familiar cinematic situations.  And it's got Christina Applegate being both funny and beautiful (which isn't the worst way to pass time), and it's also the last movie by Lloyd Bridges.  A lot of the references haven't aged as well as you might hope (there's a groaner of a "Forrest Gump" joke that also leaves me in giggling fits), but who cares?  "Mafia!" wasn't built for the ages, but you also don't have to watch O.J. Simpson trying his hand at comedy here, either.

2 / 5 - TV

Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy - 2004

"Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy" - 2004
Dir. by Adam McKay - 1 hr. 38 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's nothing better than a comedy that is still funny years later.  They're pretty few and far between, and more often due to a timeless premise (like "The Odd Couple") than being built around an individual's performance (like "The Jerk").  But they do happen, and "Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy" is still the best thing most of the people involved with this film have done to date.

The premise is simple: Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) is an anchorman in San Diego in the 1970's.  He's a buffoon, but a beloved one.  When Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) enters the picture, the chauvanistic knees all jerk, and the two leads go from lovers to bitter rivals.  The setting allows the cast to indulge in all the silly fashion quirks of that era, which would be insufferable in lesser hands.  Thankfully, the era itself isn't the point of the jokes.  Since the characters in general are so over-the-top, it makes sense for the fashion and decoration to be so as well.  Possibly the key to the entire thing is that there's never a moment where anyone figuratively winks to the camera; these characters inhabit their world fully, and do so with enthusiasm.

I couldn't tell you what it is that makes this movie so funny other than what I've just written; I can tell you that I laughed out loud over and over again as I was watching this (and this might have been my fourth or fifth viewing, although I hadn't re-watched it recently).  There are a couple of things that are noteworthy (and sometimes unusual with comedies).  First, the cast is ridiculous.  The actors (and Christina Applegate) in "Anchorman" are responsible for most of the memorable comedies since this film's release.  Will Ferrell is the star here, but Paul Rudd and Steve Carell both have gone on to do a lot of really good work since.  Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Fred Armison and Tim Robbins have small roles, and Ben Stiller, Danny Trejo and Seth Rogen have even smaller ones.  Nice b-squad, there.  The other notable thing is that while Ferrell is the star, he doesn't hog all the great lines for himself.  That's not to say that I'd expect him to, but some comedies are kind of hierarchical in terms of who gets to shine.  That's completely not the case here; Ferrell has his share of comedic freak-outs, but literally all of the main characters have at least one classic, memorable line or scene.  My favorite line: Champ Kind's (David Koechner) diss directed at Wesley Mantooth's mother.  The line I quote most often (to my dog): "You know I don't speak Spanish."

Perhaps the most important member of the cast is Christina Applegate.  She's usually the best part of whatever she's in, and it's a pleasure to see her not only knock yet another role out of the park, but to stand toe-to-toe with whomever she's on-screen with.  Ron Burgandy is such a strong character (and performance), but it wouldn't be nearly as funny without an equally funny (and strong) foil.  Also thankfully, she doesn't play a fun-killer (an unfortunately common role for women in comedies); when Ron spots a rainbow in a fantasy sequence, she says, "Do me on it."  She's not putting a damper on things, she's along for the ride and willing to take things one step further.

Now that I've heaped praise on everyone I can think of, there's not a lot more to say than that this movie is shaping up to be a comedy classic.  My earlier comparison to "The Jerk" is one that I'll stand by.  This is an absurd, fun movie that works according to it's own logic, and is filled with energetically silly performances.  I find it impossible not to get caught up in the fun.  What's not to like about that?

4.5 / 5 - DVD (Unrated Edition)

Hall Pass - 2011

"Hall Pass" - 2011
Dir. by the Farrelly Brothers - 1 hr. 45 min.

I did a little research, and saw that this was the first Farrelly Brothers movie I've seen in literally a decade (the last one I'd watched was 2001's "Shallow Hal").  Comedy movies go through phases, where one guy or one crew of guys dominate for a period of time.  The Farrelly brothers had that distinction for the mid- to late-90's ("Dumb and Dumber," "Kingpin," and "There's Something About Mary" are about as tight of a three-film run in comedy that I can remember), but they've been eclipsed by the Apatow explosion since then.

What I liked about this movie:  the Farrelly brothers still know how to build a humor scene up, and then keep pushing things until it's a classic.  There's an early scene that involves stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis being watched on security cameras that is hilarious, a golf course sequence, and a later scene involving a stalker-ish character that works really well, too.  And the actors in this film do a good job of taking the rest of the material and keeping it afloat, even if the material isn't up to those three sequences.  I think that it might have been a more interesting movie if it had flipped the focus to Christina Applegate and Jenna Fischer's characters over Wilson and Sudeikis', though.  I know that there are rarely female buddy movies, but those two could not only pull it off, but stand a good chance of making it awesome as well.

Nitpicking:  Wilson and Sudeikis have a posse for about half of the movie, and then when they say they're going home because they're bored, they completely disappear.  And I mean gone - none of them show up again.  That's okay, aside from the golf scene, they're not nearly as funny as Wilson and Sudeikis.  My other problem is that I often intensely dislike films that glorify marriage and family.  It's tough to pull off without being saccharine or just plain stupid, and I know that embracing the opposite would be veering into Jody Hill/Danny McBride territory.  I guess this film pulled it off as well as it could, but there was never much doubt as to how the various characters' situations would play out.

Criticism always sounds harsher than praise, and I did enjoy "Hall Pass."  It fits in well with the Farrelly Brothers' post-"Mary" work, which you'd have to decide for yourself how much praise that is.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre