It’s a very rare film that can make me laugh out loud in a cinema. Those who know me know I’m not a big one for expressing myself with *Brick voice* LOUD NOISES *End Brick voice* as it is, so a film that can achieve this feat has got to have something special. What kind of special ingredient would this be, you ask? Slapstick, of course. Good old fashioned, silly, illogical slapstick.
So. Let’s set the scene. After a short hiatus of different career explorations, Ron Burgundy and his news team are back together and better than ever. Brian’s innocent question of who’s driving the vehicle as they converse is answered by Ron’s confident assurance that the RV is on cruise control. No danger. All good. Ron exhibits some admirable xenia as the host, offering his compatriots some chimichangas with his readily available deep fat fryer. Champ asks Ron why he happens to have a bag of bowling balls and terrarium full of scorpions, but Ron is too modest to tell the whole story. When Brian informs Ron that cruise control only regulates speed, however, it doesn’t seem like things are going to go well.
And indeed, they don’t. All of that delicious fat goes to waste once the RV runs off road and flips around, changing into slow motion when the liquid instead decorates Champ’s face as he subsequently screams in agony. One of those spare (pun intended) bowling balls goes flying and makes contact with Brian’s unappreciative forehead, again eliciting a scream of intense pain. But these inanimate objects aren’t the only ones that get to deal out injuries on the pain train. Nope, Baxter, our gentleman of foggy London town, also gets in on the action, biting Champ on the arm to add an extra dose of punishment. Most animals aren’t cool with being caged, so, when a scorpion makes its way out of that terrarium and spies Ron’s tongue, that’s an easy target for revenge. There’s still time for more though. After smacking his head against the RV roof, Brick is subjected to a final moment of torture as that pesky bowling ball connects with his nether regions. Oof.
Anchorman 2 received a lot of flak at the time of its release for basically being a rehash of the original, but I didn’t have much of an issue with that, and I wasn’t exactly expecting a radical change in narrative anyway. With golden nuggets like this scene, there’s no problem. The set-up is genius, slow motion is used to humorous perfection, and the whole scenario is just so darn tootin’ funny. 100% of the time, it works all the time (sorry Brian, I had to change your humorous illogical quote to make factual sense in this case).