Hollywood never misses a trick to squeeze extra pennies out of a (mostly) used up turnip and the latest big squeeze is the “re-release” of movies you’ve already seen before in 3D (Jurassic Park, The Lion King, Little Mermaid, etc.). And now they think they’ve stumbled onto the next big wave by re-releasing Anchorman 2’s “R-Rated, Supersize” cut for a couple weeks before the movie comes out on blu-ray/DVD/Redbox/netflix/whatever-the-hell-we’re-calling-it-these-days.
The only problem? It’s only about five percent different than the PG-13 “regular size” Anchorman 2 we saw in theaters back in December. Yes, there’s a lot of new dialogue, but none of it is really laugh out loud funny or worth paying to watch the same movie twice. Even worse, every single scene has the exact same structure as the PG-13 movie, and it’s not like there’s a real increase in violence or sex (there’s no nudity) so I’m not even sure you would really know it’s R-rated.
What are the differences? There’s a couple more “fucks” in this version, a few scenes are longer than the version that was first in theaters (painfully so), when the RV flips over early in the film it is filled with chimichangas instead of scorpions and bowling balls, there are several unfunny songs added in, and there’s a scene where Brian shows off his condom collection to Brick before his first date.
Yet some of the movies best laughs are totally gone (like that absurd laughter after Champ’s joke about weekdays when they first reconnect with Brian or calling bats “chicken of the cave”) and replaced with jokes I can’t remember the next day. And did I mention that not one full scene has been added except for a couple lame musical numbers? Why not at least give us a different ending where Ron ends up with Linda or at least skips the blind section that doesn’t work at all or at least add a couple scenes that are actually funny? I’m sure some extra scenes will be on the blu-ray so it feels stingy not to include a couple to paying theater audiences…
The original Anchorman 2 last December: C+ (a movie I wanted to like more than I did like)…This version in theaters now: C (definitely not superior) …The very idea of rereleasing a near-identical movie and pretending it’s different: F