Ah, expectations. They can make one person hate something so beloved, they can warp our fragile perceptions of culture to a more negative or positive position. Such is the case for Will Ferrell’s latest comical endeavor Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which comes as a sequel to perhaps the most revered film of our generation. Unfortunately, this new installment in the epic Ron Burgundy saga rarely hits the heights of the first film, a major disappointment considering all the talent involved.

Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) are living lives as respected newscasters. But after Ron is fired by their boss (Harrison Ford, one of the film’s numerous celebrity cameos), the duo’s marriage falls apart and Ron sets off on his own path. Unfortunately, Ron is living in despair, until a 24-hour news network unveils a plan; bring Ron and his whole newsteam (Paul Rudd, David Koechner, Steve Carell) back together and be a part of the new news station.

Honestly, I’m giving more consideration to an actual coherent plot than the creators of this film likely did (interestingly Will Ferrell wrote this film, which explains a lot). While the first Anchorman film was written because the creators had an actual story to tell, this new one is being told solely because they had some jokes to tell, jokes that aren’t even that funny. Oh don’t get me wrong, plenty of laughs emerge from the film, mainly anything from Carrell’s Brick character, but otherwise the film feels like a bunch of Funny Or Die sketches with very little actually keeping them together. Occasionally they score laughs, but this kind of middling structure grows tiring after a while.

After a while, the wide variety of shenanigans grow tiring, especially since the whole films rest on Ron Burgundy abandoning his entire character arc from the first film and reverting back to his narrow minded ways. Honestly guys, if you can’t make the sequel without abandoning your characters, maybe you shouldn’t actually make the film. That being said, there’s still a roster of talented folks eager to be a part of the Anchorman franchise, with the best cast members being the aforementioned Brick and his newfound love interest Chani, who’s given awkward and riveting life by the amazing Kristen Wiig. I wish newcomer James Marsden got a bit more to do here; Greg Kinnear hides behind some facial hair while delivering a couple of humorous observations.

In the entire film, Wiig and Carrel’s antics are pretty much the only thing in the film that liven up the proceedings, with nothing else coming close to the fantastic heights of unexpected hand grenades or Jack Black punting a dog off a bridge. Instead, the film settles for some surprisingly uncomfortable moments deriving from anti-semitic and racist humor (a scene where Ron Burgundy makes racist remarks at a dinner with African-Americans is particularly unsettling), but maybe the thing that offended me the most about the entire ordeal is just how unfunny it was for long stretches. Maybe expectations were so high that they could never be met, but I have a hunch that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is just an underwhelming experience regardless of whatever expectations one might have.