"Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" (2013)

The films created by actor-director duo Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Stepbrothers, Taladega Nights) are puerile. They thrive on juvenile, silly, weird, hugely digressive jokes, and they live on the assumption you'll find Ferrell and his co-stars saying seemingly inappropriate, random or surreal non-sequiturs inherently funny. Enjoying a McKay film isn't a matter of being agreeable with its story but its anarchic disregard for politeness or logic. If you find Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues offensive or frivolous, you're right -- but that's the whole point!

The stories in these films are loopy, loosely strung together, and ramshackle enough that a light wind of critical analysis could upend it. The film picks up with drunken buffoon, seventies caricature, and news anchor Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and his wife and co-anchor Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), working at a New York news station. Veronica is offered the nightly news position and Ron is fired, which causes the manically selfish, and none too subtly prejudiced and sexist, Burgundy to spiral into his own meglomania. Ron walks out on his wife and young son. When offered a job at the new experimental twenty-four hour news channel, Ron reassembles the news team (Steve Carrell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) in an effort to show up his wife.

It's the illusive, volatile flights-of-fancy between the actual plot where Anchorman 2 will either win your favor or leave you feeling meh. The film indulges free-wheeling, improvisatory moments here and there that more than occasionally don't feel entirely justifiable. For instance, a subplot involving the special needs Rick Tamland (Carrell) and an equally mentally challenged love interest (Kristen Wiig) is unbearably dull and unnecessary. It's not like its prequel was much better at this but it was leaner and more plot-oriented.

Still Anchorman 2 is funny. Too many moments fall flat, but there are some moments where the silliness is hard to resist. Some lines and jokes are surprisingly subtle and thrown out so causally and unobtrusively it's easy to miss the layers of meaning at work. In it's efforts to skewer the mega-corporation, twenty four-seven news cycle era, it never goes quite far enough. By moving from local to national news in its leap to sequel, Anchorman 2 similarly goes broader and loses some of the abundant charm in the process. Like a 24 hour news network, there's still charm -- you just have to be tuning in at the right moment.

Grade: ★★