The test screening process should be a useful one for filmmakers; showing a film to an audience, especially a comedy, you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. The horror stories of the process, including abuse by studio executives, are, of course, also well documented (“raise your test scores by X or we’re sending it direct to video!”). If one has ever attended such a screening, one thing you learn quickly is that even master filmmakers have first drafts that don’t work. The alchemy, or “movie magic,” of making a comedy is making people laugh and striking that balance.
A film like Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, now screening in a Super-Sized R-Rated version, must have been crafted from these screenings; with so many jokes and alternative takes, including frequent improvisation, its hard to know what works. Still, the “original” PG-13 cut (released in December) was enjoyable, if not a little longer than it should have been. With that said, I have no idea what Paramount, director Adam McKay, and producer Judd Apatow were thinking allowing this new version to exist beyond a few funny extended scenes that would have been enjoyable as standalone extra content for the web or DVD.
The plot remains the same; anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is essentially fired, he abandons his wife and falls into an alcoholic spiral. He’s recruited by Freddie Sharp (Dylan Baker) to join a 24-hour national news station, the first of its kind, while bringing back the old Channel 9 news team, including a hot-shot reporter and sex symbol Brian Fontana (Paul Rudd), along with the brain-dead weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner).
The new version doesn’t obey a simple rule: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. The PG-13 version I had seen in December was enjoyable, even if it dragged, but here, the pacing is wildly off balance. What remains are four core differences and a few jokes that had been in the original, but are now gone (it’s a shame, for those few made me laugh). New here is Fontana’s expanded condom collection, a new musical number that’s mildly amusing, and an extended crack smoking scene, which attains laughs. Perhaps comedy arises mostly from surprise, but apart from a few chuckles, the theater was largely silent for the new version. To put it in terms 80’s Ron Burgundy may understand, this is the “New Coke” of Anchorman 2 cuts.
Courting trouble for greedy studio executives and filmmakers who love to tinker like George Lucas, the low cost of digital distribution made this possible. Sometimes watching two versions, as in the case of a remake from the same source material can be very insightful. The strangest case, of course, is of the two prequels to The Exorcist; Morgan Creek Productions disowned the first version, directed by Paul Schrader, hiring Renny Harlin to reshooting the entire film from the same script. After Harlin’s version had been released on DVD, Warner Brothers gave Schrader’s version a token theatrical release.
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version may just be that; running an extra 20 minutes it feels diluted and far extends its welcome. While McKay and his team mostly got it right the first time around, this version feels like an early test screening that was retooled into a theatrical cut — even the sound mix and color timing seem like a rush job.
My hope is McKay agreed to this cut for the reasons Gus Van Sant allegedly remade Psycho, so that no one else would have to do it. Perhaps McKay is proving a point here: a “producer’s cut,” specifically one of those “unrated” and “uncut” monstrosities designed to capture your attention back in the days of renting VHS in person, is dead. Fattier than its previously bloated cut, I imagine the actual director’s cut it somewhere between the two.
A kind of bait and switch, ironically enough, most of the new stuff is featured in the trailer for the Super-Sized cut. Just because you’ve added 700-plus new jokes (and whose counting?) doesn’t mean you’ve added laughs. In fact, many of the most outrageous gags, including the Winnebago crash, are less funny this time around. If you net out the old jokes and account for the frequent dead silence, it’s no wonder Paramount didn’t screen the new cut for critics.
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version is currently playing in wide release and will be part of the home release.