2016 is the perfect time to make a sequel to the 2001 cult-ish classic, Zoolander. The vapid, narcissistic, pea-brained male models that populated that movie have now taken over the earth in the real world, in the form of the “selfie generation,” a bunch of real-life Derek Zoolanders, Mugatus and Hansels running around, staring at themselves like idiots in their little, digital mirrors as they dream of YouTube stardom and Kardashian-level success. I’m a big, fat, thirtysomething, generationally supplanted crank (make me young and beautiful again!) and I would love nothing more than to watch Ben Stiller and his middle-aged cohorts rip this new wave of self-obsessed monsters to shreds (too harsh?) via a new go-round with Mr. Magnum himself.

Zoolander 2 tries to do that and, and fails at all of it. Hard. Like, heartbreakingly hard. The movie opens with Justin Bieber being brutally shot to death and then taking a selfie before he peaces out. That and a selfie-stick car crash are really the only jokes we get about selfie culture, and they feel in bad taste, almost too real to laugh at (people applauded at the sight of Bieber getting shot to death in my theater, which I found to be more than a little sick). Zoolander is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, its male-model characters gifting us with the some of the most glorious displays of sheer stupidity put to screen. There was orange-mocha-frappuccino; the Mer-Man commercial; the iconic “Hansel. He’s so hot right now. Hansel.” That movie was a non-stop shit show of giant laughs that I enjoy to this day, so the fact that its sequel is so unfunny and off-base is a really tough pill to swallow.

The new story picks up with Derek (Stiller) and Hansel (Owen Wilson) estranged, both from each other and the outside world. Derek’s living as a “hermit crab” in a snowy cabin somewhere in “extreme northern New Jersey;” Hansel’s living in a desert hut, in a serious relationship with an orgy of lovers (which includes Keifer Sutherland, playing a straight-faced version of himself). They were driven apart by a freak accident at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too that killed Derek’s wife and mother of his child, Matilda (Christine Taylor, who makes a couple of brief cameos) and scarred Hansel’s face irreparably. As a single parent, Derek fails again, losing his son, Derek Jr., to child services when he “can’t remember how mom made the spaghetti soft,” depriving his son of nourishment completely, apparently.

Derek and Hansel make up and reunite when they’re beckoned by the world’s latest, greatest designer, Don Atari (SNL’s Kyle Mooney, whose interpretation of passive-aggressive hipster youths is the movie’s highlight) to walk the runway in his ultra-hip garb. The joke’s on them when they’re shoved onto the runway in cheap shirts with the words “OLD” and “LAME” printed on them and they’re ridiculed by their glitzy, fresh-faced onlookers. The world’s passed them by (sob). There’s a larger, more pressing issue, however: There’s been a string of celebrity murders being investigated by the Fashion Police, led by Valentina (Penelope Cruz), who believes Derek has the key to finding the people responsible. Derek agrees, as long as she helps him reunite with his lost son.

The plot’s as uninteresting and flat as it sounds, a trashy send-up of the international spy thriller that chose to spoof that genre seemingly arbitrarily. But all that could be quickly forgiven with some good, solid comedy. Alas, Zoolander 2 isn’t funny, not one bit. The botch is in the approach: Stiller, who directed and co-wrote with Justin Theroux, Nicholas Stoller and John Hamburg, makes that godawful mistake most bad sequels make, attempting to emulate and bottle the magic of the first movie. This never works, and the fact that it’s now 15 years since Zoolander was released only makes things worse: Comedy has evolved many times over since 2001, and the same tricks don’t work anymore. A character being woefully uneducated and small-brained, for example, has been taken to new levels by, say, a show like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (Charlie Kelly is the new king of dumb-funny). For this second installment to really work, it would have needed to reach new levels of stupid, in a sense. Instead, it reaches new depths of disappointing, leaning on nostalgia and old, worn-out tricks. Watching Derek go on a joy ride “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was funny the first time, but not so much in 2016.

There’s a freaking ass-load of celebrity cameos in this thing, and not one of them is worth the dough it cost to get them on-screen. Sting pops up. Arianna Grande’s in there. Katy Perry. Benedict Cumberbatch. Billy Zane returns. Will Ferrell‘s back as walking bitch-fest Mugatu, and he’s even joined by Kristen Wiig, playing his vaguely European partner in crime, but even they seem off their game. None of these or the myriad other appearances are amusing and, in fact, they’re a bit uncomfortable to watch. Neil Degrasse Tyson shows up to say, directly at the camera, “I’m Neil Degrasse Tyson…BITCH!” Ooh! A respected educator and astrophysicist cursed! The moment’s clearly designed to make audiences explode in applause; instead, it only elicits groans and eye-rolls. We’re familiar with these cheap parlor tricks and we’re ready for something new, and all Stiller gives us is a regurgitated mess.

Here’s a no-brainer for you: Take Kevin Hart and Will Ferrell, two of America’s funniest and most popular comedians, find an excuse to put them in a bunch of scenes together, and let them go. Tickets will be sold by the millions, people will laugh, checks will be ginormous, and a good time will be had by all. Get Hard should have been great, but the material is so off-base and dated it’s a wonder Hart and Ferrell, two of the most in-demand actors in the industry, didn’t take one look at the script and toss it straight into the trash.

Everything you’ve heard about Get Hard—that it’s unforgivably racist and homophobic—is pretty much true, though I found it much more unfunny than offensive. Race and homophobia are sensitive subjects that have been mined for comedy for decades, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The truth is, as a country we’re still tragically insecure and anxious about gay people and minorities, and humor is a great way to address those issues and acknowledge the absurdity of it all so that we might further the conversation and amend our ignorances. That sort of comedy takes a deft hand, though, so as not to seriously offend anyone, and in this sense, Get Hard fumbles hard, landing flat on its face.

Ferrell plays James King, a rich, gifted hedge-fund manager whose affluent upbringing has molded him into a walking pile of prejudice and entitlement, oblivious to the world outside his bubble of mansions, fast cars, and tailored suits. He’s an expert at white things, and a bumbling idiot when it comes to poor minority things. When he’s arrested for fraud and embezzlement, he hires his black car-washer, Darnell (Hart) to get him prison-ready in thirty days. In reality, Darnell’s a pansy family man who’s never been to and doesn’t know the first thing about jail, but the idea of a law-abiding black man doesn’t exist in King’s bubble. The rest of the movie plays out like a protracted training montage, with an inconsequential storyline about James trying to clear his name thrown in because…plot.

Director Etan Cohen, Jay Martel, and Ian Roberts wrote the script. Yes, they’re all white dudes, but surely they can’t be as insensitive and clueless as James, a character of their own creation, right? Right?! To answer this question, let’s examine an atrocious scene about halfway through the movie. James is in a bathroom stall of a gay establishment getting ready to perform fellatio on an impatient stranger (comedian Matt Walsh) as one of Darnell’s prison survival exercises. James looks frightened, and we see glimpses of the stranger’s dick. It’s clearly meant to be shocking that we’re seeing Ferrell’s face inches away from a dick, but the only thing shocking is how clumsy and unfunny it is, and the only dicks of consequence are the dicks who wrote this damn thing. Are we not past the point of finding gay sex yucky? It’s a question of taste, really. If you find rape jokes funny, boy, are you in for a treat with this movie; asses get stuffed and unstuffed aplenty. If that’s not funny to you, um…don’t see this movie. Can’t make it any clearer.

The saddest thing is, Hart and Ferrell are better than this. Ferrell is a natural when it comes to playing dimwitted, confused white guys, and Hart’s manic, firework energy is a perfect complement. These guys are really, really funny, and the fact that the writers felt they needed to resort to dick shots, rape humor, and stale race jokes to make audiences laugh is senseless and desperate. Hart and Ferrell have been making millions and millions of people laugh for years and years. They don’t need help! Hell, even the height disparity between them is funny! There are a few scenes in which they get to flex their comedic muscle, like a showcase in which Hart plays three types of thug in a prison yard exercise with Ferrell reacting like a scared little boy. These improvised moments work because the stars feel like they’re playing off of each other freely, unimpeded by the poorly crafted script.

Alison Brie plays James’ greedy fiancé, and Craig T. Nelson plays her father, who also happens to be James’ boss. They show up whenever the plot needs to move forward, and are otherwise inconsequential. T.I. surprisingly emerges as the film’s breakout performer, playing Darnell’s thuggish cousin. Despite the role being staggeringly stereotypical, the rapper somehow manages to make his character the most believable and authentic in the entire movie.

It’s hard to be truly insulted by a comedy when it’s this moronic and misguided. I can understand if people find Get Hard offensive, but pitiful seems a more apt word to me. There are some chuckles to be had here, because with such gifted and reliable talent that’s pretty much a given. But the vehicle that houses Hart and Ferrell is so scummy and poorly crafted it isn’t worth anyone’s time.

Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller made a guest appearance during Paris Fashion Week on the Valentino runway to announce the return of the ridiculously good-looking duo, Hansel and Derek Zoolander, in Zoolander 2.

The original movie is about the vapid but good-hearted male models that are hooked into a ploy to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia (or the slightly less offensive Micronesia as it’s stated in the edited movies released in Malaysia and Singapore). With a cast including Milla Jovovich, Jerry Stiller, David Duchovny, Jon Voight, and Vince Vaughn, there were also waves of cameos in the first film such as Donald Trump, Victoria Beckham, David Bowie, and Billy Zane.

Talks of a sequel have been in the works since at least 2008 but things are finally starting to look solid. It will be written and directed by Justin Theroux who is known for his writing credits on Tropic Thunder, Iron Man 2, and Rock of Ages, and he also played the Evil DJ in the first movie. So far, it looks as if Will Ferrell and Christine Taylor will be returning to reprise their roles. Penelope Cruz is also confirmed to be signed on for the film.

Filming will begin in Rome at Cinecitta Studios this Spring and will be released on February 12th, 2016.

Watch Derek and Hansel at Paris Fashion Week below.

The early months of the year tend to be overloaded with dull and empty comedies that happen to be rather light on the actual comedy (see: this year’s Hot Tub Time Machine 2).  But from time to time a real gem can spice up February and March and give us a reason to face the cold (see: last year’s The Lego Movie and The Grand Budapest Hotel).

So, while next week brings along the hopefully-funny Vince Vaughn vehicle, Unfinished Business, it’s the new red band trailer for Get Hard that’s got us holding our sides. The Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart team up has been one to watch for quite some time, if only just because of those two names.

Get Hard sees the always-hilarious Ferrell sleazing it up as a hedge fund manager who has been found guilty of tax evasion. To toughen up for his prison stint he hires the guy who cleans his car (Hart), wrongly assuming that he has served time. If the new, NSFW trailer is anything to go by, laughter ensues.

Catch Get Hard on March 27th.

First reported by The Wrap, Richard Linklater has been tabbed for his next film, an adaptation of the controversial novel Larry’s Kidney. The book recounts the bizarre story of a man who travels with his black sheep cousin to China for an illegal kidney transplant. Larry’s Kidney has also found its two stars in Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, with Ferrell in the lead role and Galifianakis suitably as the f-up cousin.

This deems a return to mainstream filmmaking for Linklater, who hasn’t had a major release since Bad News Bears in 2005. Linklater has rebounded from minor disappointments with a terrific run of critically beloved Bernie, Before Midnight, and the upcoming Boyhood.

Linklater is now tasked with redefining the careers of Ferrell and Galifianakis. Though both are big stars in mainstream comedies, their careers have become wrapped in sequels and material that hasn’t taken them out of their wheelhouses. Linklater is notable for his work with similar mainstream comedian Jack Black, who has given his best work with the filmmaker. Though the basic plot of Larry’s Kidney seems like it may be the typical comedy associated with the stars, if anyone can bring out some dramatic resonance, it might be Linklater.

It’s been nearly a decade since Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy introduced Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s (then a newcomer) absurdist brand of humor to the masses, a brand of humor that earned the film the biggest cult following for a comedy since perhaps Caddyshack and lived on in McKay’s subsequent (mildly less successful) films Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys (all starring Ferrell). In Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, McKay and his now-way-more-famous cast return with a bigger, broader, less memorable chapter in Burgundy’s story. The laughs still hit hard (I was bowled over quite frequently) and the wonderful cast is as sharp and witty as ever, but multiple, needlessly inflated, disposable plotlines drag the film down, and the novelty of McKay’s unfettered randomness has all but worn off in the last ten years.

It’s 1980, and happily married newscasters Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate, as beautiful and quick as ever) arrive at an impasse when Veronica beats Ron out for a coveted position at the news station and their boss (Harrison Ford) rips Ron’s job away (in Ford’s signature callous growl). Brimming with jealous rage, Ron leaves his wife and son (one of the worst child actors I’ve seen this year) and tracks down his old news crew to start a new career path at GNN, a news network in New York, where they help to pioneer a revolutionary concept called “24-hour news” (yuck yuck).

Returning are Steve Carrell as weatherman Brick Tamland, an extreme representation of McKay’s affinity for random dialog; Paul Rudd as reporter Brian Fantana, the embodiment of faux, cologne-collector machismo; and David Koechner as sportscaster Champ Kind, an ambiguously rape-y pervert with a hilariously uncomfortable affection for Ron (long, dick-to-dick hugs). Ron and his brigade are met with fierce hostility in New York, dished out by rival hot-shot anchor Jack Lime (James Marsden, surprisingly very funny) and their alpha-female station manager (Meagan Good). With everything stacked against him (including a miserable 2am time slot), Ron stands stubbornly determined to out-career Veronica, and finds his path to success in the form of the trashy, nothing-news we’re now oh-so familiar with in 2013 (in a stroke of “brilliance”, Ron reports on a car chase and sticks with the pursuit until the perp is caught, earning him sky-high ratings).

The satire is half-baked, laid on thick, and isn’t handled with nearly the deftness of the small, zingy, hyperbolic moments Anchorman is adored for. Narratively, the movie is a mess, with a tangle of plots and sub-plots that are so conventional and uninteresting that they bog down the film’s free-flowing, improv-is-king spirit. Veronica finds a new man (Greg Kinnear); Ron’s career focus has made him an absentee father; Brick’s found a love interest (Kristen Wiig, who merely mimics Carrell’s character, disappointingly); Ron’s success gets to his head and shuns his friends; etc. It all feels too conventional and schematic, and McKay spends an inordinate amount of time fleshing these story lines out, when all we really want to see are the gags. The crowded narrative feels restrictive, barring the talent from letting loose as much as they want to.

The good news is (yes, I said it!), the funnies are as tangential, out-of-left-field, and irreverent as the first film’s, if not more. You won’t find many über-repeatable one-liners here, but there are some scenes that absolutely kill. In perhaps the most interesting narrative thread in the film (really), Ron and his family befriend a shark named Doby and sing a 2-minute-long tribute musical number in his honor that had me rumbling so hard my throat was on fire (no one else in the theater found it as found it as funny, but hey…different strokes). McKay’s sense of timing is excellent; in one scene, Ron and his team begin laughing uproariously at a throwaway joke, and then McKay awkwardly cuts–right in the middle of their guffawing–to them standing in utter silence. Again, it’s an unquotable moment, but it’s funny as hell.

McKay takes the most bizarre, out-there scene from the first film–the incredible news anchor gang fight–and recycles it here (with the expected parade of super-celeb cameos). What’s fascinating is, now that we’re so familiarized with McKay’s comedic style, the scene feels safe, redundant, unsurprising, and dull, though it still has baseline entertainment value. I wouldn’t say Anchorman 2 is an unnecessary sequel–it’s still a lot of fun to watch these guys flex their comedic muscles–but it simply doesn’t measure up to the legendary (yes…I said it!) stature of its predecessor. Unfortunately, if this sequel is an indication of a downward trend in quality for the franchise, the forecast for Ron Burgundy’s future (okay, now I’m just being stupid) looks pretty cloudy (sorry).

Nearly a decade after its release, one of the most popular and beloved comedies in recent memory, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, finally gets a follow-up, with Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Set in the early ’80s, Ron (Will Ferrell) finds himself at odds with his wife, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), when she beats him out for the coveted spot of nightly news anchor at the station. He leaves her (and his son), gathers his old news crew–Brick Tamland (Steve Carrell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), and Champ Kind (David Koechner)–and heads to New York to change news as we know it forever.

Director Adam McKay (The Other Guys, Step Brothers), after years of his original Anchorman cast growing in popularity exponentially since that first film, had to jump through a lot of hoops to give fans the sequel they’ve been clamoring for for years, but he got it done (and even shot enough alternate footage to release an entirely different cut of the movie!). Retaining all of the absurdity-based humor McKay and his cohorts made famous in the first film (and sprinkling on top of that celebrity cameos galore), Anchorman 2 is sure to please the droves of fans who have been waiting years for new Ron Burgundy quotes.

During a visit to San Francisco, McKay spoke with us and a small group of journalists about why it took so long for the sequel to see the light, he and star Will Ferrell’s writing process, why he likes randomness so much, replacing nearly every joke in his alternate cut of the film, and more.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues opens nationwide this Wednesday, December 18th

How did you and Will approach making the sequel?
The reason we didn’t do it for so long was that we were just like, “Why do a sequel?” They usually feel kind of perfunctory, or like a cash-grab. But then people kept asking us, “What about Anchorman 2?” It suddenly became intriguing. We looked at what makes sequels work and what doesn’t make them work. The ones that work continue the story [from the first film], and the ones that don’t just repeat it. The key at that point was, “Is there another chapter to this?”

We spent an afternoon kicking around ideas when we realized, “Oh my god–24-hour news started in 1980”, and that’s not that far from when the first one took place. That’s even bigger than “the first female anchor”. Once we had that, we knew we had a movie. That is a different story to tell, and it does put them through different paces.

Your brand of humor is so tangential and wild, exploring corners of comedy that very few other films have the balls to approach. With this movie, was it difficult to one-up yourself and go top places that were even more absurd?
I think, fortunately or unfortunately, that we could do that all day long. If you gave us 300 days to shoot, we could give you 300 days of tangential comedy. That’s never a problem. If you give us the most straight script in the world…if you gave us Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, we could fill it with comedy. Our background is improv–Ferrell is Groundlings and I come out of Second City. The key is [having] a good story with enough emotional beats you can hit, and that engine is working and holding it up enough–we just want [a story] that holds it up enough. Once we knew we had that story of them coming to New York and all this change, we could do the comedy forever.

And it’s also because of your cast.
Yeah. The fact that you have four go-to point of views for comedy, you can always, in any scene, throw it over to Rudd, throw it over to Carrell, Ferrell can become the straight man, or he becomes the guy doing the messed up thing and Rudd’s the straight man. It’s never-ending with that sized cast.

You said you were kicking around a couple of ideas for Anchroman 2. What was it narrowed down to? Could you share three of the ideas?
Keep in mind–the other ones were bad ideas! (laughs) One was an “Irwin Allen” idea. I think it was still about 24-hour news, but the guy who owned 24-hour news built an underwater hotel, and the news story was that the glass they were using was faulty and Burgundy covered up the story because he didn’t want to lose his job. The end of the [film] was this crazy, 1970’s, Irwin Allen, underwater thing with the glass cracking, water flooding the room, those bad Towering Inferno shots. We actually wrote and ending with that, but we could see it getting a bit boring.

Another one was as dumb as this–they go to space, somehow. Ferrell was like, “I don’t know what this is, but somehow we’re in space.” You could justify it! You go to the space shuttle, you could have it be that this is the first reporter to go up. I was wary of those action-y third-act endings, where it’s like, you’re in a comedy, so you’re doing action, but not quite as well. It can get a little boring. Ultimately, we stuck with the characters and made it about [Ron], his wife, his son, the news, and staying in that pocket.

You still have an explosive climax in the movie.
We do. You’re talking about the gang fight?

Yes.
We kind of knew that somehow it’s crazy, since in the first movie, [the fight] is operating within the logic of that movie. Somehow, it became somewhat of a conservative ending, as crazy as it is! We weren’t going to do it at first. We said, let’s not repeat anything from the first movie. We were going to be really strict about it, but we said, “We’ve got to do another gang fight!” It would be too much fun, and now that we know how to make movies a bit better, we could do stuff we didn’t do the first time.

How easy or difficult was it to secure some of the cameos for that gang fight?
It was pretty crazy. We drew up a wish list of all the people we wanted, and what we ended up with was basically our wish list. It’s never happened before–usually, when you do your dream casting, you get 30%, 40%, only one of the people. In this case, they all said yes, and it was insane. When they all said yes, I thought, “Should we try crazier ones?” So we actually tried Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was an immediate, decisive “no”. Oprah’s person was like, “You never know!” There was an hour where we thought, “She might do this!” But then [they said] no.

The Barack Obama one was crazy–we had a semi-connection in the White House, and the connection was like, “He might do this! If he gets to say something with a point of view…”. The joke was going to be that he was from C-SPAN. He was going to say that C-SPAN was going to change the news, because it was going to be stripped-down, and you’d see the truth. “Someday, everyone’s going to be watching C-SPAN!” Of course, I’m sure someone underneath him was like, “Are you fucking crazy?! He’s the President!”

How did you develop your brand of humor?
It’s always been what I’ve liked, going back to the Fawlty Towers episode when the German comes in with a head injury. I remember laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes. Or, in Airplane when there’s the spinning headlines and there’s the one that says, “Boy Trapped in Refrigerator, Eats Own Foot.” A lot of comedy writers have pointed to that joke as a seminal joke. It’s those moments when all order goes away and it’s just chaos. To me, as a kid, there was nothing more exciting than watching a movie and realizing, “Oh my god–anything can happen!”

The first time Will and I ever collaborated was our first year on SNL, a sketch called “Wake Up and Smile”, which was about the teleprompter breaks [during a newscast.] It basically becomes Lord of the Flies–since they’re not being told what to say, they all revert to their animal selves. It ends with Ferrell ripping the head off of David Allen Grier, with lots of blood, and they form a cult, like, “The Order of the Hand”. They just regress immediately. The first sketch he and I ever wrote was called “Niel Diamond: Storytellers”. That was another one where we just got fucking insane. The joke was [that Niel Diamond was telling all the stories behind his songs, and he] has all these harmless pop songs, but the stories are just horrible. “When I killed a drifter to get a hard-on.” They just get more and more out of control, and we realized, “we both like this!”

You’ve got all this footage of these funny guys saying funny things, so much footage that you have enough for a second edit, which you’re going to release. How much fun is it in that editing room, and is the second edit done?
It is done. I just went in and gave all the last notes on it. It’s crazy. It’s 350 new jokes. I think there’s, like, seven jokes we couldn’t replace that were spoken jokes. Otherwise, every single joke is replaced. It’s about 10-15 minutes longer, there’s whole new runs and riffs. I can’t imagine doing a comedy any other way. When we’re in that editing room, the worst feeling is when you’re painted into a corner by a crappy joke. “Shit! We have nowhere else to go!” With every movie I do, I hate that feeling more and more, so I just make sure to have alternate takes no matter what we’re doing. It’s the greatest–I’ll go to the editor and say, “There’s got to be a better joke than that.” A lot of times I’ll remember [something we did on the day], and he’ll go and dig it out. One of the other editors will cut four versions of the scene, I’ll go “That one!”, and we’ll test screen it. The sheer volume of improv on this one, because there are so many actors, we were doing two screenings at the same time most of the time. We’d run another cut in a different theater, and I’d get to see every joke. You record the laugh track and you go, “Holy shit, that worked!” Up until we locked, we were finding new jokes. We screened the alternate version before we had locked picture on the regular release, and I found four new jokes in the alternate version that went into the regular movie. By the way, I could still be doing it now. It never ends. It’s a blast.

Were there any discarded plotlines for this movie?
No, amazingly. There are a lot of plotlines, too. I was joking with [Judd] Apatow that it’s like James Brooks were 11-years-old and into minotaurs and tridents, that’s what [this movie’s] like.  There are, like, five storylines going through it. There’s the love story with Meagan Good, there’s the broken marriage, there’s the relationship with the son, Tamland has a love affair going, there’s the news and the synergy thing…there’s a lot. I thought for sure one or two of them would be cut, but they all seemed to play.

In this case, it was just the alt jokes, the sheer tonnage of improve. It’s very funny when you tell the studio, in the first [movie’s] case, “We have a second movie.” They can’t comprehend it. I told them, and they were like, “Haha! Must feel like that, right?” I told them that we had a second movie and that we’d already cut it, and it just didn’t compute. Later, when the movie kind of hit, they were like, “What did you mean about that second movie?” They didn’t even do anything with it the first time. It was the same thing in this case. I kept telling them we had a second movie with all new jokes. This time, they believed us a little more and they’ve already scheduled it to be released.

What made you want Brick to have a love interest? Why him?
I think the answer is almost in the question. Just say, “Brick has a love story.” Will and I sit down and just spray out possibilities. We write this 25-page document of what we’d want to see in the movie that makes no sense with the story at all, these dream moments. I don’t remember which one of us said, “Brick’s got to fall in love.” It wasn’t calculated at all. It just came out of what we wanted to see in the movie. I think it’s a little bit inspired by the ending first movie where it says he’s married with eleven kids.

Are there any jokes that you went with even though they maybe didn’t quite work with test audiences?
That’s an interesting question. That’s the fun of it–there’s an artistry to that. You’re not a slave to those test audiences. We put jokes in even though they don’t work, just because we think they’re funny. But you need the audience to go on the ride with you; you can’t just isolate them. It’s this give and take you’re constantly playing with. There’s the line between Brick [and his love interest] Chani (Kristen Wiig) where she says, “I’m trained and certified…” (and then Brick finishes the sentence) “…to fire a military-grade missile launcher.” It never got a peep out of the audiences, but at one point I was like, too fucking bad–it’s going in the movie. Sometimes there’ll be a joke that I don’t necessarily love, but then it kills, and you’re like, “What? Why is it killing?” If they love it that much, it’s like, alright, they can have that one. That process is just so much fun. You’re taking the audience on a ride, but messing with them a little bit.

They do test scores [with the test audiences] where they combine the “Excellents” and the “Very Goods” and you get a number out of it. You hear about movies that get a “98” or “100”. We don’t want that. For this one, I said the highest we should ever get is a “90”–I still want 10% of that crowd not liking the movie. That was the highest we got. There still should be some people walking out going, “That got too weird for me…”, you know?

It’s been going around that Paramount had cold feet about giving this movie the green light. What was their concern, and what changed their minds?
It was purely about the fact that since the first one, all these guys have become incredibly successful. They all have high quotes, and rightfully so. On paper, if you’re going to do the movie and pay everyone what they should be paid, it was going to be a certain budget level. We told them that, and they went, “Are you fucking crazy!?” We said alright, we won’t do it, and made The Other Guys. People kept asking us and asking us about it, and we went, “Shit, man. We should do this anyway.” We went back to the studio and said we’d do a pay cut, and we still couldn’t get it right. Then, at the last second, they were able to find the right budget level, but it still involved everyone taking 60% pay cuts. But, you know what? We can’t complain. We still get paid ridiculous amounts of money for the jobs we do. Ultimately, it’s so much fun.

Everything Must Go is a drama adapted from a short story that was directed by Dan Rush, his first feature film. The film generated mixed reviews after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The synopsis of a man losing his job and a wife who throws all of his possessions across their lawn sounds like a setup for a comedy, especially when that man is Will Ferrell, but the film sticks to a more serious tone.

Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) is an alcoholic sales representative who just got fired from his job. But his problems do not end right there. When he arrives home, after making a stop for alcohol of course, he finds that all of his possessions are out on the front lawn of his home. Attached to the front door is a note from his wife that explains their relationship is over. The spare key that is normally hidden under the plant was removed and the locks on the door have been changed.

Having nowhere else to sleep Nick decides to sleep in a chair of his on the front lawn. Apparently sleeping in his car was an afterthought. Upon waking up from water sprinklers he notices a woman across the street moving in. He greets her and explains to her the reason that all of his stuff on his lawn is because he is having a yard sale. He asks her if she would watch his stuff so he could go to the store but she is not able to. So he gets a neighborhood kid to watch his stuff while he goes to the liquor store to get more alcohol.

Not being able to find his keys to the car, he borrows the kid’s bike. It is at the store that he discovers that his wife has cancelled the joint checking account. Luckily for him, he still has cash for his purchase. On the bike ride home he runs into a person repossessing his car. We still have not seen his wife at this point (and we never do) but from the note we know she left him because of his drinking problem and also because he cheated on her.

Nick is not very determined to do anything but sit around and drink beer on his lawn. A neighbor ends up calling the cops on him but Nick is in luck because his AA sponsor is a detective. He pushes Nick into packing his things up otherwise he will have to arrest him. The detective helps him out by telling him that he can hold a yard sale for 5 days to buy some time. So turns out he is going to have that yard sale after all.

There is a pivotal scene in the film is when Nick is preaching about fighting back when times are tough, it is then that he realizes that he is not fighting back right now in his life. It becomes apparent to Nick that he is currently following his drunken father’s footsteps when he watches an old childhood video where his father is drinking. You get the sense that Nick is a good person deep down and really does want to do something with his life now.

Many feel like this is Will Ferrell’s first true dramatic role considering Stranger Than Fiction was more of a dramedy than anything. It must be refreshing for him to do such a different role than what he is used to playing. Ferrell is surprisingly good at playing a low key average-man and he even makes it look natural.

Everything Must Go had opportunities to be very cliché but it managed to avoid most of them thus making it a little more enjoyable than your average film. The film is depressing from the very beginning and does not budge too much from being a downer but that by no means is a bad thing. It tackles a dark subject of alcoholism and captures it well. Not losing hope is the theme of the film and I would reiterate that for people watching it as it does tend to get better after the halfway point.