ANCHORMAN 2

First of all I should admit that I am really not an Anchorman fan. I just find the entire film stupid nonsense  - and not the funny kind. For me, the success of Anchorman is one of the many great wonders of the movie world, way up there with the likes of how has Leonardo DiCaprio not won an Oscar yet and why did everyone go so crazy for Silver Linings Playbook? In short, me reviewing Anchorman 2 is like getting a heavy metal fan to review a Justin Bieber album - I am not the film's target audience so I probably can't speak for the majority, nevertheless, here is what I made of it.

Anchorman 2 follows in the same vein as the original. We re-join the character of Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) in the 1980s, he and his now-wife Veronica (Christina Applegate) are a successful news team partnership and they have a young son together. However, following Veronica’s promotion the couple split up and Ron is approached by GNN to anchor part of a revolutionary 24 hour news channel with the help of his old friends from San Diego Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), and Champ Kind (David Koechner).

The gags are just as stupid as they are in the original Anchorman

In comparison to the first film, the storyline is much stronger; it is fresh with much more depth and the narrative has many different layers –Ron’s relationship with his estranged wife, the desperate bid to get ratings on GNN, and competition with other news anchors alongside a romantic subplot for everybody’s favourite dunce, Brick, are all prominent themes throughout. 

However, some of the characters feel a bit stale and aren't included as much as they should have been. Similarly to The Hangover franchise's Alan-centric third film, Anchorman 2 has seen who the favourite characters are and rely heavily on them to bring the laughs to the point of exhaustion. Brick and Ron were the two favourites from the original film and as a result it seems as though director Adam McKay couldn’t be bothered with Rudd and Koechner’s characters, meaning that much of the time Brick is massively overexposed and they are awkward spare parts on the sidelines - much to the film’s detriment.

Brick and Ron are great sources of comedy, if you like that kind of thing, but Brian Fantana was especially brilliant for comedic timing and together with Champ Kind they delivered a more understated level of humour which is sorely missed in the sequel. When Anchorman 2 started the laughs from the audience were coming thick and fast but after 90 minutes of Brick being simple-minded and Ron being casually sexist and racist the laughs massively faltered and it was easy to see that the audience were getting restless without Brian and Champ being utilised to balance the humour out.

A rare moment of comedy

A refreshing lift to the stagnating characters and perhaps one of the film's saving graces comes from the star-studded list of cameo appearances. Alongside the endless stream of gags and chaos, casual prejudice and tasteless jokes familiar faces from Kanye West to Jim Carrey are cropping up – almost turning the film into a game of ‘spot the celebrity’. It seems as though everybody wanted a brief slice of the action, and with the original film’s unwavering popularity, who could blame them for wanting their face in the sequel?

All in all, the Anchorman humour is most definitely not for everyone. However, as somebody who found the original almost painful to watch this sequel is a vast improvement. There are a few universal moments of brilliance, such as the four men smoking crack live on air, but there are also painfully awkward moments that are gratuitous and fall flat, see Ron Burgundy's meal with his black girlfriend's family where he tries to 'speak black' and insults the entire African-American community. 

If you aren't a fan of the original then avoid this one at all costs as there really isn't much for you here.  The humour is just as silly and patronising and at an extra 30 minutes longer than the original it starts to drag and the characters become overbearing. At the end of the day the Anchorman franchise will never be the making of a cinematic masterpiece,  but it knows its audience and panders to their tastes - no matter what the critics may think, fans will love it and that is all that really matters!

★★☆☆☆

Anchorman 2 is released nationwide on the 18th of December 2013!

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Love,

DESPICABLE ME 2

 

 Okay, I love Despicable Me, it was without a doubt one of the best films of 2010 and one of the greatest in this generation's batch of children's films. I was so excited to see this sequel and had only heard good things about it until the day before I was due to see it, and this criticism disheartened me. In fact, one review said that it was just plain awful, Agnes is no longer adorable and the minions are hardly in it... Now that I have seen it all I can say to that critic is: What the hell did you watch?!

Despicable Me 2 is completely level, if not a tiny bit better, than the original film and if you are a fan of the first film I genuinely struggle to see what there is for you to actively dislike. I can understand why you might preference the first but there really isn't anything in the second film that is offensive to fans of the first or is really that different in any way. I will admit that yes, Gru is no longer despicable. But this is quite a natural character development that we actually see happen at the end of the first film. Despicable Me ends with Gru being a reformed man, he is no longer evil-orientated but family-orientated and I don't know why anyone would thus go into the sequel and expect for him to have gone backwards as a character and if he had done it would have really turned me off. The fact that Gru is now such a family-man who worries about his eldest daughter dating and throws princess-parties for his youngest is funny and works perfectly, especially in the context of the first film where we saw these changes first begin to develop.

The fact that Gru is less despicable and more family-orientated means that overall the focus of the film is less despicable - gone are the days of trying to be the biggest villain in the World, Gru is now being recruited by the AntiVillainLeague to help catch a new super-villain. Whilst there are a substantial amount of villain-esque scenes (Secret plotting, spying, weapons and gadgets) much of the film is centred on Gru's relationship with his girls as well as a romantic subplot and this is where the biggest laughs come. Personally, i much preferred this angle; it was refreshing and set Despicable Me 2 miles above other children's films. All in all the underlying essence of this film was something that absolutely everybody in the audience could relate to - family. And that is what makes it so great.

The Minions are out in force!

However, don't let this family drivel make you think that Despicable Me 2 has lost the humour that ultimately made the first film. Once again Steve Carell delivers an outstanding performance as Gru and he yet again brings so much life and personality to an animated character that he has definitely cemented himself as one of the greatest voice over performers of our time. As well as Carell's hilarious delivery of Gru, the minions are out in force (and this is reason number one as to why i think the aforementioned reviewer hadn't actually seen the film). The minions are in this film excessively more than the first, and to begin with I was a little wary because I was worried that if this continued throughout the entire film and they became dependent on the minions for laughs then it would become overbearing and the minions would end up losing their charm. However, the film's creators actually manage to strike the perfect balance and whilst the minions did end up making the audience laugh the most, it wasn't in a desperate way. In fact, the minions are the best representation of how clever and well-made this film is - a minion is ultimately a little yellow blob, there seem to be an infinite number of them and they don't even speak a proper language... Yet each minion we are introduced to appears to have its own clear and concise personality and can make an entire cinema filled with grown-ups laugh out loud just by making a noise. If that isn't representative of a well-made film then I don't know what is.

As well as the minions, (and reason number two as to why i think the aforementioned reviewer hadn't actually seen the film) Agnes is even more hilarious, lovable and adorable as she is in the first film. She is in it much more but yet again, not in an over-bearing way and whilst she gets the most attention of the three girls, the other two are sure not to disappear into the background. Agnes is the scene-stealer of the film, I looked forward to her presence and was never disappointed by her little quips and one-liners but I think Edith and Margo are just as necessary to the film's plot and without the three of them together it would not have worked as well as it did.

Agnes steals the show

To conclude, Despicable Me 2 is a testament to the clearly incredible creative team behind it - the characters are perfectly balanced and gel flawlessly together, the storyline was a realistic development to the original and had just as much, if not more,  heart, humour and life about it. Most importantly, the film's creators clearly saw what worked and was loved by the audience in the first film (i.e. Minions and Agnes) and expanded upon them in the sequel - they paid attention to the audience's response and delivered something that they knew would appeal. Usually once a film finds the character that works they are tempted to be lazy in sequels and just exhaust these characters in order to get cheap, tried-and-tested laughs out of the audience (Hangover III i'm looking at you), Despicable Me 2 had the potential to just go the easy way out and solely depend on the minions and Agnes to carry the film but thankfully they had more self-respect as a franchise and respect for the audience than that. Whilst the minions and Agnes are my personal highlights, the rest of the film's overall quality did not suffer in the slightest - Despicable Me 2 is clearly a film that had a lot of hard work, creativity and imagination go into it, it isn't lazy in any way and that is what makes it such a success.

All in all i award Despicable Me 2 with ★★★★★

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Love,