Ferrell returns as cult-favourite anchor

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Rated: M

Starring: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd

Reviewer: Mark Naglazas

It is seven years after the early 1970s-set first Anchorman movie and former San Diego news sparring partners Ron (Will Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) are now married, living in the Big Apple and co-anchoring the weekend news for a national network.

When they are called into a meeting with the network’s about-to-retire weeknight anchor, one of those high-minded grumpy types nicely impersonated by Harrison Ford, he gives Veronica the plum job at the same time as giving Ron his marching orders, telling him he’s the worst anchorman he has ever encountered.

The unreconstructed alpha male Ron can’t abide Veronica scoring the position he has dreamed about all his life —“God put Ron Burgundy on this planet to have salon-quality hair and read the news”— and returns to California where he ends up working as an MC for a Sea World dolphin show.

A shot at redemption comes when a producer from a start-up 24-hour cable news network in New York called Global Network News (an amalgam of CNN and Fox News) headed by a bullying, shoot-from-the-lip Australian billionaire (Josh Lawson) steps in.

The new Anchorman is just as funny as the first with the non-news stuff.

You got to love a satire on the creation of news as entertainment that takes a swipe at the anything-goes philosophy of the entire entertainment world.