Warmed-Over Leftovers

Judd Apatow is known for making very funny comedies that, frequently, have very loose and improvisational filming schedules. He works with a lot of comedians, writing, directing, and producing a ton of shows and films, and he knows that comedians frequently do their best work when they’re given a chance to work over the material and do a few riffs on lines and scenes. Apatow produced Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and he worked with Will Ferrell’s chosen director, Adam McKay, to help find the right tone for the film. In the process, that ended up making a lot of unused material from that movie.

Outtakes are nothing new, of course. Plenty of comedies over the decades have had outtake reels included with them, either in the credits of the film or packed as special features on home video (or released online now that home video is dying). Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy even had its own outtakes and deleted scenes selection. But for those that hadn’t seen those, or were curious what the film might have looked like if different decisions were made, there’s a different cut of the film: Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy certainly is a special case considering just how much material was left on the cutting room floor. We’re talking about an entire plotline that was cut simply because it wasn’t working in the final film. It was long, not funny, and it really didn’t add anything to the characters or the plot of the movie. All of that was left out… and then built back into Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie. And this would normally be where I note that the lost material wasn’t really that good, and we’d have been better off without a different cut of the film. Except… Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie is actually pretty watchable. Maybe, in some ways, even a better cut of the film that what we got from the theatrical release.

Let’s be clear, the version as presented in this “lost movie” is uneven as hell. The film is presented as a kind of “sequel” to the original cut, but to make for a feature length presentation, a lot of footage (or alternate takes) from the original film had to be reused here to fluff a full film. It opens when Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) comes back from a trip abroad, only to deal with Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his cohorts once again getting jealous of the relationship the two have. Ron thinks he’s a better journalist than Veronica (which he’s really not) and he ends up bungling a story she’s working on, pissing off everyone around him.

That story: how a group of terrorists, the Alarm Clock – Kevin Corrigan as Paul Hauser, Chuck D as Malcolm Y, Maya Rudolph as Kanshashga X, and Tara Subkoff as Mouse – want to spread the word about their manifesto and bring down the establishment. They don’t actually have a written manifesto, though, as their leader, Paul, just can’t seem to get it finished. All they really do is rob banks and make big threats. Still, Ron makes it all worse when he jumps the gun on an interview with Paul, and that forces the terrorists to act and… do something. They kidnap Veronica and take her hostage and it’s up to Ron and the gang to save the day.

The most interesting thing about this storyline, from a writing perspective, is just how it would have fit into the original film. Watching it, these terrorists are so pathetic it’s not even funny. The whole thing feels like an improvised skit that was drawn out to be a main plot in a film, but without enough actual material to make it work. The characters aren’t funny, and the whole situation feels underbaked. And yet, this would have been the main plot for the original film because it basically overlaps a different storyline that actually did end up in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: the birth of pandas at the San Diego Zoo.

I will admit, watching the first film, the panda storyline felt slight. It was a pretty weak storyline to hang a film on, and it really doesn’t work as a climax for the first movie. Defeating a terrorist cell certainly does feel more climactic, so I can see why they wanted to go with this version instead… but it doesn’t work. Putting more focus on the main characters and their interactions and minimizing the other storyline (as well as making it about pandas) works better in the context of a larger film, and I don’t think anyone is going to complain about not having the Alarm Clock in the original cut of the film.

With that said, everything around the Alarm Clock storyline actually does work better in this alternate cut. I found that I liked Will Ferrell more, and I wasn’t nearly as irritated by Ron Burgundy this time around. He’s still a man child, to be sure, but the alternate cut does a better job of showing him as a professional broadcaster as well as someone that Veronica could have looked up to and fallen for. Yes, this cut muddies the waters with narration that makes this film seem like a sequel, even when it then reuses scenes from the original cut that clearly show Veronica as a new reporter first starting out at the channel. It’s uneven, true, but these alternate scenes show a lot of merit, especially when it comes to fleshing out the setting and the characters.

I also thought some sequences were funnier. There’s a dryer, more witty tone to the jokes in this cut, relying less on Ron and his friends being giant man-babies and more on wordplay and a bit of ribald wit. Ron feels less like a buffoon and more like a Leslie Nielsen character, forced to react to what’s going on around him and just trying to keep his head above water. A number of alternate takes have very funny jokes, and I can see why they were reused for this cut of the film. I frankly think the original version of the film would have been better off if it could have been a little dryer in its tone than what we first got.

But even here I will acknowledge some stuff doesn’t always work. Some sequences simply go on too long as the camera was set somewhere and the actors were allowed to just keep riffing until the director finally said “cut”. Likely the intention was to take these scenes and pare them down, but since Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie needed every second of footage it could get to be feature length, whole chunks of scenes are used in their entirety, just going on and on. One sequence is Ron driving Veronica around town, not looking at the road and driving on instinct. It’s funny, but not three minutes of funny.

And then there’s a long take where Champ (David Koechner) confesses his love for Ron, and this is the most painfully unfunny five minutes I think I’ve ever sat through. Had it been fifteen seconds with some reaction shots, that would have been fine. But it just drags on forever, and feels, frankly, a bit homophobic. This material didn’t need to be in either cut of the film and I think this alternate movie would have been better off if they left it out entirely.

All of this combines for a film that does feel incredibly uneven. Some fans of the original movie might not like Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie because it’s not just, “more of what made the first film great.” It’s a lot of abandoned material that was cut for the right reason, along with some scenes that just don’t work. But in and around all of that is a lot of funny material that is worth seeing, especially in the context of a larger story. Whether you count this as a loose sequel or just an alternate version of the first film, Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie can be very funny. Whether it’s worth it to you to see it or not is really up to each viewer. Thankfully the alternate film is included as a special feature in most releases of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, so if you like one version you’ll get the other for free. That’s a price for admission I think we all can live with.