In Which The Protagonist Never Was Very Good

Having Made It

by NOAH DAVIS

Anchorman II: The Legend Continues
dir. Adam McKay
119 minutes

A friend and I saw Anchorman the day it came out in 2004. Twenty-four hours later, we were back in those same bucket seats at the Providence Place Mall, laughing at Ron Burgundy and the gang in a half-filled theater. Fast forward six days and some friends who had grown tired of not having any context for our endless quoting came along as we saw it for the third time in one week. 

In the journalism world, this story would help establish some sort of journalistic credibility, a reason why I am fit to review Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. (In the real world, all it does is establish the fact that I had nothing to do in the summer of 2004.) It's akin to a cheeky anecdote Burgundy might tell his viewing audience, punctuating the narrative with a fake laugh and a wink at the camera, an in-joke between him and his millions of adoring viewers.

He has that massive audience because the sequel – nearly a decade in the making – begins with our favorite mustachioed anchorman and his anchorwoman wife, Veronica Corningstone, having made it to the big time. The duo are reading the news in New York City. The Big Apple. Unique New York. The pair looks older but only one of them is wiser. Within minutes, Ron gets himself fired and ends up hosting a dolphin show at the San Diego aquarium. This goes poorly.

He is at the end of his rope, quite literally, when a man arrives to rescue him. You see, some wacko Australian airline tycoon has a crazy idea to launch a 24-hour news network. He wants Ron and the news team to work the graveyard shift. Burgundy acquiesces, hijinks ensue gathering the group, and, eventually, they arrive in Gotham.

The legend does indeed continue, mostly because the template has not fallen very far from the movie outline tree. The voiceover guy does his voiceover thing. Burgundy has lady issues. Champ Kind yells. Brick is a bumbling moron, right up until he's not, and then he is again. Baxter saves Ron from certain death by animal. A massive news team brawl features more cameos than recent Saturday Night Live episodes. Burgundy messes up his life, learns a lesson (sort of), and we go home happy. It's essentially the same film.

So why is it so unsatisfying?

The original succeeded because it delicately bounced from bit to bit. It's not Citizen Kane, but it's an elegant conglomeration of character studies that understands its strengths. The film doesn't get bogged down in things like "plot" and "morality" and "lessons." When Burgundy, always a buffoon, gets his comeuppance, we've seen it coming since the opening minutes. It's a tacked on resolution that only occurs because all movies need to end. Nearly everything that happens does so inservice of getting to the next sight gag, absurd scenario, or Brian Fantana report from the field. It's no coincidence that the initial idea to base the movie around Corningstone's abduction by a Maya Rudolph-led gang didn't work.

Anchorman II is funny – more so than I expected, honestly – but it's not particularly fun. Like other recent Ferrell vehicles it's part of a class of comedies that feel the need to be about something more than laughs. It wants to make a point about The Way We Live Now, using the 1980s as a parable. Which fine, whatever, but this is also a movie that features a person getting hit in the gut with a bowling ball and Brick's stupidity played for laughs. These are, obviously, at odds with each other. Why must these comedies be infused with such heavy-handed morality plays? Where's the levity? Tis the season, after all.

It's also the season for commerce, and it's impossible to write about Anchorman II without discussing the massive marketing campaign that was unlike anything ever. Jesse David Fox's piece on Vulture offers the best summation of the blitz, but it essentially boils down to creativity inspired by a small budget. Ferrell, for example, didn't get paid for doing those Dodge Durango ads. He certainly has plenty of money (and may get some percentage of the produces due to his producing credit), but he still did an impressive amount of free promotion. In the past, Ferrell has said Burgundy is his favorite role to play – he's basically just saying things that make him laugh – and it's clearly true. His joy is evident, which makes it even stranger that the film is so un-fun.

If the opening weekend is any indication, the promotional push largely failed. The movie grossed $26.8 million, less than the first one, which was the 23rd biggest opening of 2004. (It only made $85 million, a disappointing 30th overall. The film sits sandwiched between The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed on the 2004 total gross chart.) Anchorman gained a cult following later, slowly and organically. This one won't fare as well. It feels like it's looking into the past rather than forward-thinking like the original, which spawned hundreds of memes. It's surprising for Anchorman II to miss since every good newsman knows his audience. But then again, Burgundy never was very good.

Noah Davis is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He last wrote in these pages about Calvin and Hobbes. He tumbls here and twitters here.

"Walk Behind Her House" - Tess Parks (mp3)

"This Time Next Year" - Tess Parks (mp3)

In Which Calvin And Or Hobbes Are Transmogrified

Destroying the World

by NOAH DAVIS

Dear Mr. Watterson
dir. Joel Allen Schroeder
90 minutes

Calvin and Hobbes is gone but Calvin and Hobbes has not been forgotten. This is the simple thesis at the heart of Dear Mr. Watterson, a documentary from filmmaker and self-professed Calvin lookalike Joel Allen Schroeder. Starting in 1985, Bill Watterson wrote and illustrated thousands of comic strips featuring a six-year-old boy and his very real stuffed tiger. He stopped on December 31, 1995 but nearly 20 years after Calvin and Hobbes looked out over a fresh snowfall and said "Let's go exploring," the panels remain engrained in pop culture. Schroeder, 34, set out to learn why.

The film begins with a series of seemingly random people offering their thoughts about the effect the strip had on them. A young redheaded woman holds up a copy of "The Lazy Sunday Book," one of the book collections that have sold over 45 million copies in two dozen languages, and sheepishly admits that shoplifting the tome was her "first and only crime." Another man who happens to be a 300-pound black man, offers that "Calvin's the kid you want to be. Even if you're a 300-lb black kid, you still want to be Calvin." Seth Green, wearing a Star Wars shirt written in Japanese and not one of the bootleg Calvin and Hobbes shirts he will later admit to having made with his friends, says, "Calvin and Hobbes is such a subversive comic but it has such a purity to it that most comics don't because it is so joyful and very much in imagination of this kid." Other testimonials alternate between simple recollections that grasp at meaning and Green's overblown praise. These come within the first 10 minutes.

All of which is to say that people like Calvin and Hobbes. They really do. Jenny Robb, curator of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum to which Watterson bequeathed many of his original drawings, has never met anyone who felt negatively about the strip. A father on a bench tells the camera that "it's one of those things that when you find it, you want to share it," and proceeds to explain how he shared it with his son. 

For the most part, Dear Mr. Watterson sticks to this format: clips of interview subjects attempting to extrapolate their own personal experiences with the comic into universal truths. Schroeder also talks to contemporary comic strip artists but the idea is the same. While there are bits and pieces of revelation in these recollections, too frequently it's simply people talking about themselves and and their banal thoughts about what a little boy and his tiger told them about What It All Means. It gets trying, quickly.  

But these trips down comic memory lane, the periods of nostalgic recollection, aren't entirely bad. On at least one level, Calvin and Hobbes is a comic about nostalgia. Watterson brilliantly wrote and drew the world of an imaginative child but it's universal enough to bring all kinds of adult readers back to their youths. Calvin and Hobbes is praised, correctly, for dealing with deep, philosophical issues but the reserve is true, too; it speaks to the part in all of us that wants to put on a pair of snow pants, make a fort, and fight off the evil snowmen. Nostalgia can be remarkably simple, whether it comes in the form of a comic strip or memories shared with a filmmaker.

Nostalgia also sells. Schroeder spent six years making what he hopes is his masterpiece, raising more than $120,000 over two Kickstarter campaigns. The money, presumably, comes from people who wouldn't be out of place in the film itself. If Robb and others are to believed, that's all of us. This is, admittedly, a somewhat cynical and negative reading of a film that's clearly a personal labor of love (albeit one that cost at least $120,000) for a filmmaker who loves his subject. But Dear Mr. Watterson feels shallow. Schroeder tries hard but most of the film is only satisfying because it is about Calvin and Hobbes and it gives fans, of which I consider myself one, a reason to reminisce. There's value there, but hardly a full-length documentary's worth.

Ironically, the film is at its best when it gets closest to the elusive Mr. Watterson. Schroeder travels to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the small town outside of Cleveland that Watterson calls home. The filmmaker never attempts to make contact with his subject – the documentary gets its name from the only line in a word document Schroeder has never finished, or even really started, to the writer and illustrator – but the city serves as a proxy. We see live footage of the forest Calvin plays in, the triangle of streets at the center of town Calvin towers over in one strip where he's blown up to Godzilla proportions, and other glimpses into the world we already know on paper. We begin to understand how the man captured the all-encompassing universe of a boy.

We also learn that Watterson was guilty of his own particular brand of nostalgia. At a 1989 comic convention, he gave a speech titled "The Cheapening of the Comics." It's a long, frequently eloquent, always passionate dissection of the state of comics, lamenting the loss of creative control at the hands of the syndicates, the newspapers, and the cartoonists themselves. It's a call to arms, a bold stand by an up-and-coming creator who is frustrated by an industry he loves. Contemporary comic creators in Dear Mr. Watterson tell us that his remarks were appreciated by some members of the industry and disliked by many others. But they were genuinely his views based upon his principled stand, a stance that continues to cost him hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees. While some interviewees in the film understand his choice and others don't, they all respect his decision. Watterson, like his main character, chose his own path. So did Schroeder in bringing Dear Mr. Watterson to the screen. You have to suspect the unseen creator of the comic would be proud.

Watterson certainly carved out a place in the world. "I think Calvin and Hobbes are the last great cartoon characters. He nailed that. It's great to be first but it's also great to be last," Berkeley Breathed, creator of Opus, says late in the film. For a variety of reasons – mostly due to Watterson's singular genius but also the destruction of the newspaper industry, the fracturing of the comic community, etc. etc. – we will never see another comic like Calvin and Hobbes. And that's fine. The boy and his tiger will continue to exist in memories and books, waiting to be discovered by future generations. That's a fact. But you have to wonder how much that reality really needs exploring.

Noah Davis is a senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He last wrote in these pages about Haywire. He tumbls here and twitters here. 

"When You Break" - Bear's Den (mp3)

"Isaac" - Bear's Den (mp3)

The new EP from Bear's Den is entitled Agape.

In Which The Speed Of Light Is Merely Suggested

Believable Blur

by NOAH DAVIS

Haywire
dir. Steven Soderbergh
93 min 

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) enjoys wearing leather, drinking wine and running. She also likes beating up dudes, although it's unclear whether she genuinely enjoys kicking their asses or if she derives pleasure from it simply because she's so good. It doesn't matter, really; the important part is that she wins. Sometimes, the boys initially get the upper hand — in Haywire's first fight scene, she requires the assistance of a diner patron to subdue her co-worker-turned-lover-turned-foe Aaron (Channing Tatum) — but she always gets her man.  

Kane has guy problems because of her chosen profession, which is lady James Bond sans government affiliation. She works for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), her ex-boyfriend, who runs a small Blackwater-type organization. The business is struggling financially and it's about to fall further behind because Kane, Kenneth's best operative, is leaving and "taking her clients." Why she has clients is never explained. Very little about Kenneth's business model makes any sense.

Boy convinces girl to do one more job (surprise!) because it offers him an in with MI-6, an association he believes will supply him with more business. The final mission goes badly (surprise!) and Kane finds herself on the run, attempting to unravel a conspiracy that involves operations in Barcelona and Dublin, and a variety of older, graying men (Michael Douglas and Antonio Banderas).  

She explains all this to Scott (Michael Angarano), the aforementioned coffee shop customer, during a series of extended flashbacks that take up the first hour. After escaping Aaron, she steals Scott's car, puts him in the passenger seat, and calmly demands he help her. "I'm Mallory. You're going to fix my arm while we drive, okay Scott?" Appendage properly bandaged, she starts talking. Kane's tale involves many fights, a great deal of running, and multiple glasses of wine. As the story unfolds, bruises earned during her various battles slowly reveal themselves under her impeccably applied makeup. She is dangerous and beautiful, which makes her doubly dangerous.  

Military brat Kane would rather not use her sexuality to her advantage, a notion that is both ridiculous and impossible. She possesses lovely hair and large, obvious breasts. Spies use all their assets. Kane tells Kenneth she refuses to be the eye candy on a mission ("I don't wear dresses.")... then shows up looking stunning in an evening gown. In a moment of intimacy, she and her pretend husband, freelance secret ops agent Paul (Michael Fassbender), confess they are leaving their guns in their hotel room. There is no room in her skintight evening gown for a 9mm (nor, it should be noted, is there any in Paul's impeccably tailored suit). Upon returning to their shared hotel suite, she strangles him with her thighs and finishes her foe by shooting him with the gun hidden under her pillow. Kane then takes a shower, reapplies her makeup, and continues on her way. 

Soderbergh lets his heroine run wild and in exchange, he asks her to carry the film. Despite the presence of McGregor, Tatum, Fassbender, Douglas, and Banderas, this isn't an Ocean's 11-style ensemble cast; it's Carano and a bunch of guys there to help advance the plot. When the ploy works, it does so beautifully. Carano can deliver a punch or a roundhouse kick and look believable doing so, but, more importantly, she can take one (or, frequently, many). Watching a strong, capable woman get repeatedly beat up onscreen and feeling okay about it because she genuinely looks like she's the tougher character is exactly the effect Soderbergh intends.

Too often, however, the fight scenes veer away from raw MMA battles into the cinematic WWE camp. They look too scripted, too stilted, too much like a movie. An unfair criticism, perhaps, but Scarlett Johansson, et al has a "movie fight." The Haywire star can actually kill someone with a kick. That's why she's here; Carano/Kane should have authenticity. (It's the same reason one might, for example, cast a porn star to play a call girl.) When that fails, it's just Black Swan on 'roids, a choreographed dance with vases broken over heads and Kane's male foe inevitably dead. 

Kane has guy problems but she also has daddy issues. She admits her father (Bill Paxton) is "the only person I trust." He instilled a love of battle in his daughter by penning massive novels with titles such as Desert Assault. (Kane's copy of the book includes the inscription "Mallory, Always Semper Fi.") She spends the second half Haywire trying to reach the relative safety of her papa's enormous, modern New Mexico house that sits picturesquely in an empty desert landscape. It offers an open floor plan and a place to fight the fight on her terms.

Eventually Kane trades her beautifully brushed, dyed hair for tight, dreadlock-like braids. She arrives at the penultimate battle wearing black war paint, going Rambo in an attempt to defeminize herself. In a flashback, Kenneth tells an associate, "You shouldn't think of her as being a woman. That would be a mistake." But Kane cannot escape the reality of her chromosomes. It's who she is: a woman. It's what makes her, and by extension, Haywire, interesting. Jason Bourne has none of these problems.

Noah Davis is a contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Empty Threat" - Kathleen Edwards (mp3)

"Going to Hell" - Kathleen Edwards (mp3)

"Change the Sheets" - Kathleen Edwards (mp3)