The sequel to the hit comedy “Anchorman,” originally rated PG-13, spawned a rerelease in theaters, officially titled “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version.” The rerelease has the same plot, as advertised, but it contains 763 new, more vulgar jokes. While some of the new material deserves to be shown, most of the added R-rated jokes seem unnecessarily rude among the rest of the quirky humor, and it’s clear why they were cut in the first place.
The premise is fairly simple: Will Ferrell and the rest of the cast’s improvisational humor left Adam McKay, the writer and director, with tons of alternate footage. He realized he had enough material to replace almost every joke with a different, perhaps slightly more offensive one.
In today’s age of digital editing, the decision to make a rerelease seems logical, and one may wonder why more films don’t do it. The first “Anchorman” film, like many other movies, came out with an extended video edition, but never a rerelease in theaters.
However, after seeing both versions, I found the R-rated jokes out of place and unnecessary. The nature of the film doesn’t seem to lend itself to the vulgar humor as well as I might have thought. After all, the “Anchorman” films are known for crazy characters and random, offbeat humor rather than obscene jokes.
While the rerelease did provide a handful of new laughs, I ironically found the best parts of the R-rated edition to not be the R-rated jokes. The rerelease contained other new, more appropriate dialogue, as well as hilariously cheesy back-to-back musical numbers, involving—among other things—Steve Carell’s character getting confused and singing about Spiderman.
These parts of the supersized edition are entertaining, but don’t have enough redeeming quality to merit a full theatrical rerelease.
Unfortunately, seeing both versions was extremely redundant, because although the dialogue was wildly different in many places, I already knew every single plot point. What had been unexpected twists from the original sequel became stale.
The R-rated film might have been more enjoyable if I hadn’t already seen the original, but I can firmly say that the first edition is the better movie. It seems to me that there is a reason the original jokes in “Anchorman 2” are included, instead of the alternate takes.
Even though the idea of a newly-rated version of a film with hundreds of new jokes intrigues me, in this case, I would have preferred to watch the redeeming parts of the re-release on a DVD’s bonus features, rather than squirm through the failed attempt at a recreation of a movie I had previously enjoyed in theaters.
