Anchorman:
Wake Up Ron Burgundy (*1/2)
review by Jon
Waterman
San Diego’s most popular nightly news anchor, Ron Burgundy,
has a lot to deal with lately. To start, a woman – previously
thought to be incapable of reading the news on television – has
been hired as a reporter/co-anchor for the broadcast. So, to
compete he has to learn to be an investigative reporter, which
isn’t easy, considering his intelligence level (let’s
just say he’s coasting on charm). But the kicker is that
there’s a terrorist organization called The Alarm Clock,
which keeps robbing banks and appears to have plans to do much
worse.
This isn’t so much a sequel to “The
Legend of Ron Burgundy,” or even a companion piece as it is a rehash.
Bill Kurtis narrates our way through a long string out of deleted
scenes loosely slapped together to become feature length. Anyone
who has seen the theatrical release will quickly realize where
most of these scenes would have gone, especially early on.
But without the proper build up or exposition, the jokes don’t
quite hit as hard. Also, I found myself watching too closely,
trying to see if and when footage would be repeated. Thankfully,
very little was.
Most of this stuff was deleted for a reason. Simply put, this
stuff isn’t nearly as funny. You get a lot of the same
jokes and situations presented at different times or alternate
versions of the same material you’d find in the actual
movie. I can’t say it’s a cop out, because they
aren’t exactly pretending like this is a completely separate
film. I can’t say it’s all that satisfying either.
The new storyline falls pretty flat as well. Adding the members
of The Alarm Clock expands the cast, but they only give us
a few good scenes. At least now I can say that Chuck D (playing
Malcolm Y) is not a horrible actor. Overall, I can see why
this storyline was scrapped. The writing here isn’t as
sharp, and even though it’s the primary focus of the
movie it drags along. I can only imagine how much it would
weigh down the necessarily thin structure of “Legend
of.”
The narration does its best to hide the fact that this really
isn’t a brand new movie, just leftovers. It would definitely
be more forgivable if this deleted material was presented as
such and not necessarily put into a narrative format. Some
of the stuff gets a chuckle out of you. In fact, I’d
say it provides just as many laughs as most of those prime-cut
comedies the studios give us. So, if that’s what was
cut out of the main course, you could imagine how good the
theatrical version is. However, a lot of the scenes don’t
work and are actually very awkward and drawn out. Director
Adam McKay made a wise decision leaving this stuff out. It
would work better as a group of scenes, not in a feature.
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