Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie Reviews

Watching the deleted scenes on a DVD is a lot like eating the spent crumbles at the bottom of a bag of chips: they're never as good as the rest of the bag was, but you still eat them because you want more chips. This sums up the experience of Wake Up, Ron Burgundy pretty well. Created by editing together the heaps of unused material from Anchorman (including an entire alternate main story arc), Wake Up, Ron Burgundy does retain that "this stuff was cut for a reason" feeling, but the self-aware nature of the script's humor serves it well, creating a lot of meta-jokes where you're laughing at the actors as they're laughing at themselves. The plot of the film, which follows the news team's coverage of a radical terrorist group known as the Alarm Clock, makes for a mixed bag of new bits, some of which are a lot funnier than others. Watching Will Ferrell jabber freakishly when Ron is forced to appear on camera without a teleprompter, for instance, is hilarious, as is the mere idea of the news team hopping on a ready-and-waiting squadron of four-wheelers to pursue their story into the California wilderness. Amy Poehler's cameo as a bank teller held up by the Alarm Clock is also awesomely funny, and the filmmakers were probably heartbroken to cut her short but memorable appearance when the entire terrorist story was scrapped from the original movie. What Wake Up, Ron Burgundy is missing, however, is the character humor that made the supporting cast so fantastic in Anchorman. Steve Carrell's scenes as mentally challenged weatherman Brick Tamland are too restrained, never approaching the "I love lamp" moments that made him so endearing. Meanwhile, David Koechner's scenes as unstable sportscaster Champ Kind are so over the top they're almost sad, as Champ's repressed love for Ron proves to apparently be funnier in small doses. Of course, it's difficult to fault the film for any of these things: they're in this movie because they were cut from the real movie. It's definitely worth watching for a die-hard fan of Anchorman, and will no doubt provide additional laughs and quotability in the absence of a sequel.