Where's my map?
There's no map.
It's just green.
No, there's a map there.
Look at the monitor.
Right.
Oh, Ga-- Ron, where's my legs?
This is Anchorman 2.
It's a sequel that basically takes
the dials of its predecessor and turns it up all the way to 11.
But some things just aren't meant to go to 11.
(YELLING) Why did you take it from us?
You're clearly standing in front of us, Brick.
Anchorman 2 was released in 2013,
nearly a decade after the first film hit theaters.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
became a cultural phenomenon that
cemented Will Ferrell as one of the biggest names in comedy
at the time.
That escalated quickly.
While Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
fared far better than its predecessor at the box office
and received a fairer reception from critics,
the film failed to generate success with audiences.
Anchorman style of comedy stems from Director Adam McKay's
decision to allow his actors to improvise
a majority of their dialogue throughout the film.
Improvisation is often something that directors
try to avoid for a multitude of reasons.
The first being that from a production standpoint,
it's a disaster.
The filmmaking process is meticulous.
And every detail of every script is planned and accounted for.
With a focus on brevity, there's no real room
for adding unnecessary dialogue that
could, A, jeopardize the vision of the directors, writers
and producers.
B, create insane continuity issues
with how the characters interact with one another.
And C, confuse the editors in post production
as to which takes and reactions to actually use
throughout the film.
Adam McKay began his career by mastering the craft
of improvisational comedy.
McKay was a performer on one of Chicago's most popular
improv groups and he was also a main stage
performer at the Second City.
McKay's ability to harness improv to his advantage
could be likened to capturing lightning in a bottle.
And it really shines the most in Anchorman:
The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
Some of the deleted outtakes from the improv presented
throughout the film are some of the funniest moments,
but they were cut for various reasons,
primarily, being that they didn't
add much to the actual story.
And people are hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of the rarest--
That stench.
Smells like the inside of a fake leg.
That's where Anchorman 2 gets things incredibly wrong.
Anchorman 2 makes the mistake of thinking that the only reason
Anchorman was as successful as it was,
was due to how funny it was.
But funny only works if it has reality to prop it up.
Jokes told within a story can only be as strong
as the story is on its own.
I'm telling you, she is a real ball buster.
A real ice queen.
Mm.
I just burned my tongue.
But the story has to stand out on its own first.
This is something that the original Anchorman
does very well.
When stripped of the comedy entirely,
the first Anchorman film could potentially
make for a fairly high stakes workplace drama.
There's a power struggle, inter-office romance,
people lose their careers.
The spine of Anchorman is drama, and then uses that drama
to support the absolute ridiculousness
of the characters presented within it.
The result is that we become emotionally attached
to the characters enough to jump on board with them
during the moments in which the director chooses
to allow them to improvise.
What is that?
Smells like a turd covered in burnt hair!
The filmmakers do the work in setting up the humor
through the grounded narrative structure.
There's a saying for this.
It's called Earning It.
Anchorman 1 earns its laughs.
And it earns them through grounding the comedy
in reality.
Think of comedy as a bunch of helium balloons.
If you don't have anything weighing them down to Earth,
they're going to fly further and further away
from you until you can no longer see them
and they eventually destroy themselves.
However, with the proper amount of oppositional force,
you have something delightful and fun to look at and enjoy.
Anchorman 2 makes the mistake of thinking that they had already
earned the right to go crazy with jokes from the first film,
and it should be enough to drive the comedy.
This couldn't be more incorrect.
The concept of earning your humor isn't a one
and done thing.
You don't just earn it and then receive some sort of free pass
to create and do anything you want until the end of time.
You have to keep earning the comedy.
There's never a moment where that stops.
Anchorman 2 feels less like an actual film
and more like an extremely fast-paced joke showcase,
in which the job of the performers
is to try to make each other laugh instead
of telling an actual story.
I took that long to think of that.
[LAUGHTER]
It's not that there's no story present within Anchorman 2.
There is a very basic premise that
serves as a slightly heightened version of the story presented
in the original film.
But it doesn't feel like a strong enough story spine
to support the level of improvisation
presented throughout the film.
Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone
break up as Corningstone is promoted to lead anchor,
leaving Ron Burgundy jobless and desperate.
Ron is then courted by the first 24-hour news network
to anchor a late night time slot.
And then the story starts to come apart at the seams shortly
after that.
Ron engages in a rivalry between the Primetime Anchor, Jack
Lime, ignores his family, alienates his entire crew,
and ends up losing his eyesight.
He returns home to rehabilitate a shark
and then returns to attend his son's piano recital.
The entire film feels like it was written through stream
of consciousness, which makes sense when you consider
the fact that improv is essentially a focused
approach to maximizing the comedic value of stream
of consciousness.
There was so much improvisation added into the script
that the original cut clocked in at over four hours.
You can't guesstron on the spermum.
You can't guesstron on spermum?
Four hours is fine if you're watching Lord of the Rings,
but sitting through four hours of slapstick comedy
can almost be madness inducing.
Adam McKay said that there are roughly 240 alternate jokes
and dialogue sequences sitting on the cutting room floor, some
of which were just too strange for audiences
and has even floated the idea of releasing
alternate versions of the film with new jokes swapped in.
Holy rainbow suspenders.
Bob Cratchit six-string banjo.
Ghandi in a Speedo.
Moses on a Vespa.
When you take this into consideration,
it really starts to seem like the intent
of making Anchorman 2 was to have the story serve
as a vehicle to generate improvised comedic moments,
instead of generating improvised comedic moments to support
an actual story.
Improvisation is a risky spice to use in your film,
but when used correctly, it can lead
to some truly amazing moments.
The scene in Indiana Jones where Indy shoots the swordsman
was improvised.
The scene in Jurassic Park where Ian Malcolm distracts the T-Rex
was improvised by Jeff Goldblum in rehearsals.
Even the improvised moments in the first Anchorman
are some of the most quotable and hilarious scenes
in the history of cinematic comedy.
I read somewhere that their periods attract bears.
The bears can smell the menstruation.
This serves to illustrate the fact that an actor's intuition
can be one of the most powerful and effective tools
in the filmmaking process.
However, too much improvisation can be a detriment.
Making a sequel to a film shouldn't
feel like you're making a sequel to every single joke presented
in the original movie.
This is a trap that a lot of comedy sequels fall into.
Rather than challenge their characters
in new and interesting ways, writers often
make the decision to hearken back to the original film
by delivering heightened versions
of the previous entry's jokes.
This requires balance that Adam McKay just
doesn't apply to Anchorman 2.
In Anchorman 2, McKay delivers just more of the same,
but bigger.
And bigger doesn't always mean better.
They heighten a fight scene to the point
where the ghost of Stonewall Jackson
consumes the souls of his enemies.
Harrison Ford turns into a werewolf.
And Brick destroys buildings with a gun from the future.
The sequence is a callback to the first film
in which a variety of celebrity cameos
appear as the lead anchors of various news networks
and engage Ron Burgundy and company in hand-to-hand combat.
The original sequence is already extremely over-the-top,
so an attempt to heighten it would
be a pretty daunting task.
Brick killed a guy.
Did you throw a trident?
Yeah.
There were horses and a man on fire.
And I killed a guy with a trident.
To say that McKay doesn't pull any punches here
is a bit of an understatement.
And is the scene funny?
Yes, it's very hard not to laugh at how absurd the sequence is.
However, it is nearly 10 minutes long
and essentially adds nothing but humor to the overall narrative.
Anchorman 2 has its fair share of funny moments,
but it doesn't feel like a feature length film.
Improvisation is a fun element to add into your film,
and when used properly, it can create
some genuinely surprising and delightful moments
for both the performers and audience alike.
I'm a man who discovered the wheel
and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn.
However, if you don't monitor the level of improv happening
throughout your project, it can get out of hand quickly.
In comedy, the jokes and humor are king.
But if you don't support them with a proper story,
then you aren't really watching a movie anymore,
you're watching an improv show.
And while it can be fun at times,
two hours of jokes without structure
starts to feel extremely exhausting
and puts the audience into a glass case of emotion.
And that's it for this one, folks.
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