Video review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

The first “Anchorman” movie was spectacularly overrated, and the sequel is a heaping helping of seconds.

Oh, you’ll laugh during “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” Probably chortle quite uproariously on a half-dozen or so occasions. The rest of the time, though, is waiting around for that next big ROFL moment to arrive. During these portions, which make up the bulk of the overlong 119-minute runtime, the movie barely edges into tolerable.

Will Farrell returns as Ron Burgundy, the worst newscaster in history (circa 1980). As the story opens he loses his job and his marriage simultaneously, but gets a second chance at the then-new enterprise of television news broadcast 24/7.

Relegated to the wee hours of the morning, he and his crew of nitwits (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) soon make a splash by giving the audience exactly what they want – car chases, cute critters and jingoistic patriotism.

As a critique of TV news, “Anchorman 2” is pretty weak tea, hitting all the obvious notes without much originality or flair. So the movie has to rely on its characters and humor, which are the very definition of scattershot.

Director Adam McKay, who co-write the script with Ferrell, favor an ad-lib approach in which actors do take after take, and (supposedly) the best stuff is used for the movie. Ferrell & Co. stand there, barking out absurd dialogue until something sticks.

Their comedy mantra seems to be “Try, try again.” But is one hit to every 20 misses worth your time?
This zany M.O. does, however, allow them to try something truly audacious for the video release. They are giving us three different versions of the film, including a “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” that reportedly includes 763 new jokes.

It’s essentially an alternative edit of the theatrical version (also included), with different lines swapped out. It also includes an unrated version with even filthier gags and language.

Is the “new” version of the movie better than the one we saw in theaters? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also includes a making-of doc, gag reel, table read by the cast, deleted and extended scenes, audition tapes and more.

You have to spring for the Blu-ray pack to get all these goodies, though; the solo DVD contains only the theatrical version of the movie, and that’s it.

Movie: C
Extras: B-plus

Review: "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues"

I admit I never got what the big deal was about "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." The 2004 comedy was a modest commercial hit that somehow went on to gain near-iconic status as a comedic masterpiece. Word of a long-delayed sequel set off a flurry of rapturous attention, followed up by a marketing campaign so omnipresent that folks living in the Himalayas must be thinking Will Ferrell & Co. are becoming a tad overexposed.

The first film had a few uproarious laughs interrupted by long dull spaces in between, and the sequel is much the same.

I will further admit that I laughed three or four times during "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" as hard as anything I've seen this year. But it's a hard slog in between those wonderful moments, particularly in the dull-as-toast second half.

Are a handful of truly great comedic moments enough to make a movie worth a dollar bill with Andy Jackson's face on it, plus two hours of your time? I vote no, and I got to see it for free.

If you're a novice to the world of Burgundy: he's the world's worst newscaster, a dim-bulb egomaniac played by Ferrell with trademark obliviousness. Ron's the sort of guy who can be offending everyone in the room and not even be aware of it.

His look is pure late 1970s: neon-hued suits with ties as wide as a Buick, cheesy mustache, sideburns and a hairdo that's over-primped into ridiculousness.

As the story opens, Ron gets dumped by his San Diego network and his wife (Christina Applegate) in one fell swoop, and ends up as an announcer at the local Sea World. His drunken binges doom even that job, until a new gig lands in his lap with a crazy idea: news 24/7.

Of course, their Global News Network is a barely-concealed spoof on the early days of CNN and the fracturing of the news audience into a thousand little pieces.

Burgundy assembles his old crew and heads to New York, only to find he's relegated to the 2-5 a.m. slot, while slimy top dog Jack Lime (James Marsden) gets the primetime slot and becomes Burgundy's chief tormentor.

They respond by giving people what they want -- cute animals, car chases, jingoistic patriotism and other pap. The audience eats it up, vaulting Burgundy into the stratosphere.

The M.O. of Ferrell and Adam McKay, his director and co-screenwriter, is pretty familiar by now. The characters stand there and spout ridiculously off-the-wall nonsense in the hopes that some of it will be click with the audience.

And some of it does. Steve Carell puts the most points on the board as Brick, the innocent naïf weathercaster. As played by Carell, Brick has the social skills of an infant who was suddenly zapped into adult form. Because it's married to that sweet, dumb persona, his ramblings are funnier because it comes from a place of utter simplicity.

"A black man follows me everywhere when it's sunny," Brick says.

"I think that's your shadow," Ron offers helpfully.

At one point, the gang attends Brick's funeral, and he shows up to give the eulogy, and has to be convinced that he's still alive. He even gets a love interested in Kristen Wiig, who plays his female intellectual and emotional equivalent.

Other weirdo plot twists include having Ron date his black producer (Meagan Good), just so we can have a scene where he sits down to dinner with her family and spout one racially insensitive malaprop after another.

Things culminate in a massive battle between news teams that's more notable for the incredible number of celebrity cameos -- Will Smith, Kanye West, Jim Carrey and Tina Fey among them -- than for any actual humor generated. It's a fitting end for a movie that seems to have fallen in love with its own hype.

Review: "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

What could have been a searing portrait of race relations in America seen through the eyes of a longtime White House butler instead becomes something like a cheap "Forrest Gump" knockoff.

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is loosely based on the life of real White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents from 1952 to 1986. He was a witness to the tumultuous events of the mid-20th century, from school integration to the civil rights upheaval and Vietnam.

Director Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong, who based the movie on a Washington Post article by Wil Haygood, use this as a basis for the completely fictionalized persona of Cecil Gaines, played by Forest Whitaker. While it starts out as a strong character portrait, it soon morphs into a hard-to-believe sequence of events in which either Cecil or his son is present, Zelig-like, at every single pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.

(And yes, the official title is "Lee Daniels' The Butler" -- the studio even sent out a stern reminder to that effect. Personally I think including the name of a director or author in the title makes them seem incredibly insecure.)

Even worse was the choice to cast well-known actors as the presidents Cecil served. Most of the time they bear not a whit of physical resemblance to the Oval Office occupant they're supposed to represent, and their attempts to mimic their speech or mannerisms fall short. Thus, Robin Williams' Eisenhower seems pinched and feisty, while John Cusack as Nixon (!!) has an itchy, sad quality.

Liev Schreiber does an amusing through pretty standard LBJ parody, and James Marsden adds a New England warp to his vowels as Kennedy. Alan Rickman's Reagan is probably the best of the lot, capturing the Gipper's unseen warmth. Casting Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan seems like some sort of cruel in-joke, especially when she invites Cecil and his wife to attend a state dinner as their guests just so (it's implied) there will be some diversity in the room.

The main problem with the churning of administrations is none of them hang around long enough to make any substantial impression, so these appearances end up falling just north of cameos. One part where Cecil attends to Jackie Kennedy after the assassination, her clothes still stained with JFK's blood, is a cheap and false moment.

The movie is at its best when it peers at the relationship between Cecil, his often-troublesome marriage to his boozy wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey), his children and his co-workers. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the prankster head butler, and Lenny Kravitz is the more sedate wingman. The scenes where the White House staff hang out in the kitchen and back areas are lively and insightful, contributing to an Upstars/Downstairs vibe.

I enjoyed the section where Cecil talks about the two faces of the black house servant. You wear one face that is your own at home and among friends, but when white folks are around you must be non-threatening, indeed a non-entity -- "the room should feel empty when you are in it," Cecil learns.

He even manages to land his White House gig through strident obsequiousness. When a white manager suggests him to the black head butler, the latter takes affront -- and Cecil sides with him, saying he's right to want to hand-pick his own staff. Impressed with the way Cecil can disappear inside himself, he hires him on the spot, commenting that he'll "be a good house n*gger."

The part where Cecil tangles with his oldest son Louis (David Oyelowo) over his evolution into a civil rights activist grows increasingly far-fetched. Louis manages to be at the forefront of virtually every iconic scene from the equal rights movement -- getting beat up at a diner sit-in, having police dogs and firehouses trained on him, being nearly burned alive on a torched Freedom Rider bus, even seguing into the nascent Black Panther movement.

Curiously, the moment when the civil rights era arrives on Cecil's doorstep, the 1963 march on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, is not represented.

I think this ambitious film would have been better off as a rumination on the different paths African-Americans have taken toward equality and respect -- the way of the harsh revolutionary vs. the quiet insider. Instead, its story and emotions wander all over the map of the black experience, never finding a home.

Review: "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore"

It has been nine years since "Cats & Dogs" first exposed us to a secret underground war fought between talking canines and felines, with super-spy agents facing off with James Bond-esque gadgetry.

Now we have a sequel, of sorts, which has improved the sleekness of the computer-generated antics, but not the bone-headed approach to making kiddie flicks.

As near as I can determine, nobody involved with the first movie had anything to do with this one, other than Sean Hayes, Michael Clarke Duncan and a couple others reprising small roles voicing critters -- essentially, they're vocal walk-ons. Even the humans have been swapped out.

By the title, "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore," we might be led to believe that a dastardly arch-villain has returned to wreak more havoc. But no, Kitty Galore is a new creation, a hairless cat voiced by Bette Midler, and with an origin story that's an homage/rip-off of the Joker's.

Kitty wants to broadcast "The Call of the Wild," a nefarious high-pitched recording that will drive all the world's dogs mad, thus estranging them from their human companions, and leaving cats free to take over as, er, top dogs.

Nick Nolte provides the voice of Butch, the veteran dog agent (voiced by Alec Baldwin last time around) forced to partner up with Diggs (James Marsden), an accident-prone police dog recently recruited into the doggie agency. They've got fancy comm links in their dog houses, collars hiding lasers and lockpicks, and subterranean rocket transit tubes for high-speed travel to Dog World Headquarters.

Turns out the cats have their own spy outfit, Mousers Ensuring Our World's Safety (I'll let you figure it out), and Catherine (Christina Applegate) is their top agent. After briefly tangling with Diggs and Butch, she decides to join paws to foil Kitty's evil plot.

Tagging along is Seamus (Katt Williams), a dodo-headed dove who turns out to be an unwitting stool pigeon, but mostly is one jive-talking turkey.

There's a few occasional inspired moments. I liked the trapped room slowly filling with kitty litter. And a houseful of catnip-tripping kittens. And there's a cookie after the end credits worth sticking around for.

But this is low-wattage entertainment aimed at very small children -- kindergartners would likely grow impatient with it. It's an unimaginative collection of shiny things, cute critters and goofy action meant to distract tykes for 82 minutes.

Call me catty, but I think we can do better by our kids, and our pets.

The 3-D effects are decent, but not worth the ticket upgrade. Though "Coyote Falls," a new Road Runner cartoon preceding the movie, is a nostalgic treat.

1.5 stars out of four