Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A few good laughs.  Some great cameos.  That’s about it.

I don’t know why I went to see this movie given that I’ve never seen the first “Anchorman” movie and I find Will Ferrell movies to be pretty overrated.  The previews for it looked genuinely funny, though, so I gave it a shot.  I ended up with exactly what I’d expect from a Will Ferrell movie.  Not a lot.

Inasmuch as plot matters to a movie like this, Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) loses his job as a news anchor while his wife is promoted which causes them to break up.  After hitting rock bottom, he ends up getting a job at the first 24 hour news network where he quickly makes it a news rating juggernaut all while putting his family back together.  But if you expect the movie to make sense, you are in the wrong movie.

Given the audience reactions, this was the funniest movie ever made.  There were many guffaws and plenty of hearty laughter throughout, only I wasn’t the one laughing.  I believe I got more entertainment laughing at the people laughing at the movie than I did the movie itself.  That isn’t to say there weren’t any laughable moments.  There were enough laughs for an hour long movie, a few of which only I found funny.  Unfortunately, the movie was two hours long.

The final battle scene (yes, you read that right) has what is perhaps the most cameo appearances ever accomplished in a motion picture.  The scene is only clever because of the amount of cameos which includes Liam Neeson, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, and John C. Riley just to name a few.  Oh, and the Minotaur which was the only funny part of the whole battle.

There was, surprisingly, some pretty good social commentary in the film.  Many of the jokes that hit were of the “this is what ‘news’ has become” variety.  That’s not nearly enough to save this overlong clunker whose idea of comedy is to throw as much at the wall as possible to see what sticks.  Comedy movies have gotten more and more lazy that way.