Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (**1/2)

This everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sequel comes nine years after its predecessor, so the most impressive thing about it might be that it got made with the cast members (and director Adam McKay) intact. It’s the tail end of the disco era, and the dawn of the 24-news era. Thus, rather than parodying local news and the introduction of women into the newsroom, it features Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy working for an upstart operation called GNN (Global News Network). Ron thinks 24-hour news is “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” but a paycheck’s a paycheck. Also on board are his pals: the playboy Brian (Paul Rudd), the racist/sexist Champ (David Koechner), and the simple-minded Brick (Steve Carrell). Ron’s nemesis turned spouse (Christina Applegate) is not on board, but is in the movie. They have a son.

McKay and Ferrell’s schtick is to let the jokes fly and see what sticks, with the force of the delivery sometimes compensating for half-funny lines, sometimes merely emphasizing the lame ones. “Who the hell is Julius Caesar?…I don’t follow the NBA,” is the kind of exchange that half the audience will be amused at, and half will groan at. I’m sure the people who like the movie will disagree about which lines worked and which fell flat. One thing I found incredibly tedious was an entire subplot involving Ron’s new boss, who is, somewhat implausibly, a 30ish black woman (Meagan Good). Besides creating another female role, the character seems mostly to exist to provide an excuse for lame jokes about race. Time was when plain old racist jokes were acceptable; the modern substitute is to make jokes about racists. This itself became tiresome years ago. Maybe because the movie takes place in the early 1980s (the hits-laden soundtrack keeps reminding us) it seemed somehow fresh to have a scene with Burgundy, invited by the boss to dinner, trotting out “jive talk” in an effort to seem “hip” and “down with it,” but in fact it was as painful to look at as all the quoted phrases I just used.

The original Anchorman lacked a real satirical bite but was pretty funny. This sequel, with a better satirical target, since the 24-hour news culture is still very much with us, still mostly lacks satirical bite. Burgundy is the Inspector Clouseau of the news world, spontaneously or accidentally coming up with most of the dubious innovations of the post-cable TV news world — traffic chases on camera, Fox-News-style superpatriotism, focus on celebrities, etc. But beyond that the movie doesn’t have anything to say about those developments. It is simply a silly movie.

Now, being silly is okay. Interrupting the story with the odd fantasy sequence can be fun. And if the main characters are caricatures of womanizers, jerks, and idiots, I’m okay with that, too. But then, don’t show me that for 90 minutes and then follow up with a soppy, sentimental conclusion that asks me to have a big soft spot for these people, one that has them suddenly, and unconvincingly, developing a conscience (and/or a brain). And don’t have a big climax, an overblown successor to the West-Side Story style gang fight in the original, that is much more impressive for its guest-star roster than its humor quotient.

McKay and Ferrell are not going through the motions here. Instead, it seems like they may have tried too hard. If you’re into the kind of humor in the first Anchorman, you’ll probably laugh at something or other here. I’d bet there are more punch lines per minute than in almost any other comedy in recent memory (except maybe toward the end). But I’d also bet that, for most people, a lower percentage of them land.

IMDB link

viewed 12/4/13 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and posted 12/18/13 (revised 12/26/13)

Lapland Odyssey (***1/4)

If you see only one Finnish comedy this year, make it this genial comedy about one slacker’s overnight quest to finally get the “digibox”— digital TV converter—his wife has been asking for. Besides fitting into the slacker-comedy subgenre, it’s also a road movie. The humor is not especially culturally specific, but there does seem to be just a bit of the melancholy that hangs over a lot of Scandanavian films I’ve seen, like 101 Reykjavík, which paints winter in Iceland as a similarly dark force that dampens the soul of men, though not so much women. Beginning with the tale of a tree where five generations of men have hanged themselves is a bit bleak for a comedy, even if it happens to be told with gorgeous photography. But the hapless hero (Jussi Vatanen), traveling with his two pals and trying not to (again) disappoint his wife, brings the story to light and rather funny ending. I would have barely recommended the film but for the delightful…Finnish.

IMDB link

viewed 4/11/11 at Ritz East [Cinefest 2011] and reviewed 4/11/11

Hairspray (***1/4)

Like Little Shop of Horrors and The Producers, Hairspray has made the rare circular journey from screen comedy to Broadway musical to screen musical. Directed by choreographer Adam Shankman, this new version stars newcomer Nikki Blonsky as bubbly, chubby Tracy Turnblad, whose dream is to dance on Baltimore’s hottest teen dance show. It’s 1962, and The Corny Collins Show is still reserved for “nice white kids.” Once a month, there is Negro Day, hosted by Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah). Standing in Tracy’s way is the station manager (Michelle Pfeiffer), who doesn’t want either blacks or fat girls dancing.

Shankman’s non-musical credits include weak family comedies The Pacifier and Cheaper by the Dozen 2, but the slick patina he provides is just right for a musical, and it’s not as big of a deal that the re-worked plotting at the end isn’t exactly believable. What does remain from the 1988 John Waters movie is the sense of place and time. The prevalent pastels, teased hair, and other fashions help establish the scene, and the songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman owe a lot to girl-group hits like “Chapel of Love,” one of the songs seen on the Top 10 chart in the TV studio. Waters has said that he intentionally set his movie right before what most people think of as “the Sixties.” (Look for Waters as “the flasher who lives next door.”) Unlike with Grease, set slightly earlier, the Hairspray characters don’t feel like modern people in period couture. Thus, in a comically shocking aside, we see a pregnant woman drinking. Thus Tracy sings that she “won’t go all the way, but I’ll go pretty far.” The black characters, who seem relatively unidimensional, represent to the whites either a threat or something tantalizingly forbidden and cool, but they are apart either way. Social progress, not upheaval, is the order of the day.

The Broadway cast has been replaced, mostly by Hollywood pros like James Marsden as Corny Collins, Amanda Bynes as Tracy’s best friend, and Christopher Walken as Tracy’s dad. In the cross-dressing role of Tracy’s Mom, John Travolta may not be Divine, but he’s pretty good and, in a fat suit, looks a lot like Blonsky. He and Walken dance and sing in the movie’s most old-fashioned number, “(You’re) Timeless to Me.” Blonsky, plucked from community-theater obscurity, is a fine choice as buoyant Tracy. Possessed of a clear powerful voice, she sings what I thought were the most memorable tunes, including the opening “Good Morning Baltimore.” With nearly 20 songs crammed into two hours, I found myself slightly wearied by the time this ended, but overall it was a lot of fun.

IMDB link

written 7/27/07

The TV Set (***)

? Jake Kasdan’s comedy-drama follows a Hollywood writer (David Duchovny) as he shepherds his highbrow sitcom through the process of casting and shooting the pilot episode. Kasdan, incidentally, is the brother of Jon Kasdan, whose In the Land of Women opened the same week.
+ I’m no expert, but this seems to do a pretty good job of showing the way the TV business works, and the kinds of creative and financial choices that must be made. Watch the audition for the sitcom’s female lead and see which one you’d pick. (Lindsay Sloane, in the role of the winner, is appealing.) Watch the writer and, to a lesser extent, the programming boss played by Amazing Grace’s Ioan Gruffudd, try to resist turning themselves into whores. Presumably, when they fully emerge, they may become like Sigourney Weaver’s network boss, who has so merged conscience and commerce that, in one scene, she relates how a life-altering event led her to the conclusion that the network could possibly dominate the ratings on Thursday nights. The rest of the cast, especially Judy Greer as Duchovy’s assistant, is also excellent.
- All movies about TV and movies (like 2006’s For Your Consideration) seem to be about the same thing, the battle of art and commerce, and this is no exception. Maybe the way writers who are forced to compromise their visions get satisfaction is to write scripts about writers forced to compromise their visions. Maybe someone should make a movie about how anything good ever does make it on screen. Anyway, one (small) flaw The TV Set shares with For Your Consideration is that the production in question never seems like the brilliant piece that, for purposes of the plot, it’s suppose to be. In this case the fictional Wexler Chronicles seems passably dramatic, but, though it’s supposed to be a sitcom, not funny. And, more seriously, neither is The TV Set. Okay, that’s overstating it. Sure, it’ll make you smile at times, especially if you’re the sort of person who knows who both Hope Davis and Lucy Lawless are, but it’s only laugh-out-loud funny about twice.
= *** If you’re one who likes to watch the "making of" featurette on DVDs, you’ll probably like this movie for its behind-the-scenes glimpses. If you just want some laughs, seek out Kasdan’s delightfully goofy debut, Zero Effect.

IMDB link

reviewed 4/27/07

Good Night, And Good Luck (**3/4)

The title was the signature line of the primary subject, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. Murrow (1908–1965) is a giant in the history of mass media, but one probably at best vaguely familiar to the generations too young to have seen or heard his original radio and television broadcasts, the last of which aired 45 years ago. David Strathairn’s portrayal of the cool, intellectual, chain-smoking Murrow (who died of lung cancer) is brilliant. For George Clooney, who directed, cowrote, and costars as Murrow’s producer, Fred Friendly, and whose father was a TV newsman himself, Murrow is a personal hero. His movie focuses on Murrow’s See It Now shows about Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954; McCarthy himself is only seen in historical footage of both Senate hearings and his See It Now appearance that blends in with the black-and-white film. On-screen text tells us that McCarthy had been targeting alleged communist infiltration in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a fact few who see the film won’t already know. On the other hand, a lot of people won’t know about many other figures referenced in the screenplay. You don’t have to know the importance of CBS chairman William Paley in television history to follow the story, for example, but it helps.

The nearly journalistic approach Clooney takes is both the movie’s strength and its weakness. The use of historical footage and dialogue is a good move. The slightly archaic speech patterns portray a time now clearly bygone. The rigorous, methodical way in which Murrow critiques McCarthy is also clearly portrayed. His mixture of passionate advocacy and calm logic was probably not much more common then than now. The scenes with Paley (Frank Langella) are reminders that TV was always a business.

What the movie I think failed to do was make me feel the danger that McCarthy represented. By contrast, I was reminded of Martin Ritt’s 1976 film The Front. The Front, which starred Woody Allen, took on the related topic of Hollywood blacklisting and showed the effects of the “Red scare” on real people. It’s a movie I’d recommend to anyone. Clooney’s film is worthwhile for people with an existing interest in McCarthy or Morrow, but will probably come off as hopelessly dry to a multiplex audience.

IMDb link

circulated via email 10/27/05 and posted 11/15/13