Lee Chrimes’s review published on Letterboxd:
'Anchorman' was one of a kind - an improv-heavy, irreverent comic masterpiece that managed to do what so few of the other SNL-based big comedy hits of the last ten years of managed, by combining surreal humour with actual jokes and laughs, plus an iconic central character to build it all around.
'Anchorman 2' has been described by some as more of a character piece, and by largely sidelining Champ and Brian (given they were more joke delivery vehicles than fleshed-out characters), and giving Brick a lot more screentime including his own romance subplot (although Kristen Wiig never seems comfortable playing a female equivalent to Steve Carrell's ever-perfect Brick), it's certainly more about a story than just a succession of comic scenes bolstering a loose plot, as was the case with the first movie.
This approach means there's a lot more plot to 'Anchorman 2' but proportionately less laughs - only one gag really had me giggling, there were plenty of chuckles but the hit rate of quality lines and moments is much lower than 'Anchorman'. That's not to say the film isn't funny when it needs to be, but sequences such as Ron's extended recovery from injury, Veronica's bafflingly compliant devotion to Ron's bratty behaviour and next to no Baxter mean this is an unfortunately expected case of 'not as good as the first one'.