It's weird that Anchorman 2 is so solidly awesome; it goes against everything we know about Hollywood. When you hear that a studio has green-lit a second installment to a movie you love, part of you feels excited, but part of you feels nauseous. You want to yell, "You're going to ruin the legacy! Sequels are uninspired! You can't recapture lightning in a bottle!" And yet Adam McKay and Will Ferrell have done it -- the thunder keeps rolling from Anchorman through Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues as if the nine years between them had never happened. Indeed, the reputation of everyone's favorite sophisticated/belligerent newscaster Ron Burgundy remains as lustrous and perfect as his virile, auburn mustache.
The story picks up around 1980, a handful of years after the events of the first movie, as Ron, now married to his partner at home and at the news desk, Veronica Corningstone, loses a shot at the nationally broadcasted nightly news -- getting passed over, of course, for his über-professional, badass wife. After a despondent, irate, slightly racist temper tantrum, as well as a drunken turn as an announcer at SeaWorld, Ron gets a crazy-sounding offer to read the news again, this time for a start-up 24-hour news channel run by a fast-talking Australian zillionaire.
You can imagine what follows. Ron and his oddly articulate Border Terrier, Baxter, have to reassemble the Channel 4 News Team from the four corners of the country so they can play an integral part in broadcast-news history. Most of this is just a pretext for hilariously preposterous situations and dada-esque improvised dialogue, which is precisely what makes the film such a perfectly pitched continuation of the first movie. But in Anchorman 2, behind the absurdist comedy bits that we hold so dear is a modest, unexpectedly smart layer of satire about the idiocy of the 24-hour news cycle (absurdist in its own way).
And amid all the bizarre ridiculousness that serves as Anchorman 2's comedic bread-and-butter, McKay also knows exactly when to add a callback to the first movie, picking his moments carefully so they offer maximum bombastic satisfaction and never seem cheap. And that's kind of amazing for a comedy that specifically strives to feel chaotic, off-the-cuff, and insane. Maybe McKay and his cast simply captured another bolt of lightning in Ron's empty scotch bottle; more likely, they were just as inspired this time around as they were during the first film. Regardless, they've definitely kept it classy.