Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues' review: silly fun

Comedy. Starring Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Steve Carell and James Marsden. Directed by Adam McKay. (PG-13. 119 minutes.)

"Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" has the narrative momentum of a late-night scotch bender.

The film is all impulse, making sudden but unpredictable moves only in the vague direction of a point. Whenever there's a choice between a humorous situation for Ron Burgundy or plot cohesion, "Anchorman" creators Adam McKay and Will Ferrell always choose the gag.

And yet it's very funny, a disappointment only to those who expect to see something bold and new. True, the filmmakers and cast coast on their talent throughout the film. It's a tribute to that talent when the movie still comes close to achieving its high expectations.

"Anchorman 2" begins in New York, on the dawn of the cable news era. Burgundy is an old school figure who wants nothing to do with the next generation of broadcast journalism. But his oblivious overconfidence still leads him there - after a detour as a drunken Sea World host and a road trip in a recreational vehicle filled with bowling balls and scorpions.

The Sea World and RV sequences are pretty typical of the entire movie, as hilarious as they are gratuitous. The road scene in particular has exquisite comic timing, as the newly reunited news team slowly realizes what the audience has known for minutes - there's no one driving the RV. And then, a gloriously over-the-top disaster. I'm laughing just thinking about it.

But scenes like this also derail any chances that "Anchorman 2" might be remembered as a focused satire. The relentless skewering that permeated the first "Anchorman" is mostly gone as well.

In "Anchorman 2," Burgundy very deliberately unleashes the demons that killed cable news - car chases and celebrity tripe and half-cocked opinions. But Ferrell and McKay have no interest in exploring the themes for longer than it takes to get the laugh. Isn't it time for Ron Burgundy to play the jazz flute again? Let's have another news team gang fight!

Pretty much everyone whom Ferrell and McKay have worked with or admired is in this movie, sometimes to the film's detriment. Fred Willard and Chris Parnell, who played San Diego news executives in the first "Anchorman," are back for no good reason, except they must have been fun guys to have on the set the first time around. Kristen Wiig is more welcome as a dim-witted love interest for Brick Tamland. James Marsden is splendid as Burgundy's younger cable news rival, who has even better salon-quality hair.

It has been nine years since the first "Anchorman," and the filmmakers used the time well to imagine a bounty of new situations for Burgundy and his crew. The anchor's retreat to a lighthouse after a second act tragedy is reminiscent of "Talladega Nights" in all the best ways. As "Anchorman 2" reaches its glorious mess of a finale, even time and space don't get in the way of a punch line.

It's clear that the people who created the first "Anchorman" wanted to hang out on a set again together. That's better than getting back together just to make money. "Anchorman 2" is not great art, and it doesn't take comedy to bold new places. But it's not "Caddyshack 2," either.

One very serious aside: While "Anchorman 2" is a comedy that appears to deserve Oscar nominations no more than Kanye West deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, the production design work of Clayton Hartley is absolutely masterful. He should receive an Academy Award for the "Anchorman 2" lighthouse scene alone.

(Sorry, "American Hustle" production designer Judy Becker. There's no shame in second place.)

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