Sorry not sorry
Canadians finally fight back in the inane, but surprisingly fresh Super Troopers 2
Comedy sequels generally have a terrible track record. Films such as Zoolander 2, Blues Brothers 2000 and Dumb and Dumber To are textbook examples of studios cashing in on fan nostalgia. In these cases, however, the originals become cult classics because the outlandish characters are large enough to sustain a film and create shared cultural currency.
The original Super Troopers is just such a film. Broken Lizard created a perfect stoner comedy that relished the comedy troupe’s silliness and idiocy. The unexpected inanity of certain scenes — such as Paul Soter’s incessant “meow” to Jim Gaffigan — felt so fresh and charming that it balanced out weaker parts of the film — of which there are many.
Seventeen years after the original, Super Troopers 2 is here and has not a whiff of marijuana smoke. It’s louder, cruder and even more inane than the original. Logic is thrown out the window entirely in Super Troopers 2. The premise involves the original team — Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar), Foster (Soter),
Mac (Steve Lemme), Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske), Farva (Kevin Heffernan), plus the old Captain (Brian Cox) — assisting in the transition of part of Quebec originally belonging to the U.S. being transferred back into American hands. The ludicrous conceit opens a Pandora’s box of cheap Canadian insults — about Rush and the Barenaked Ladies, those cartoony Quebecois accents, oldfashioned Mounties uniforms, and so on. Though it might be painful to admit it, some of the jokes, strangely enough, work. Often when Americans make fun of Canadians they never get past these superficial elements. Broken Lizard, on the other hand, creates a pretty hilarious tension between the freedom-loving Americans who seem actually taken aback by the presence of a legal brothel — owned by the town mayor, no less. (He’s played by Rob Lowe in a chintzy wig and exuding a certain sleazy charm that now feels familiar thanks to our country’s more memorable mayors.)
And for once in a movie, Canadians actually fight back. We’re not nice. We’re not “soar-y.”
The audience I watched this with roared with appreciation when the Mounties attacked the Super Troopers for their country’s gun violence, morbidly obese population and lack of health care. Non-Canadian fans may not get anywhere near as much delight, as the rest of the humour is either offensive — one awful running gag features Thorny becoming addicted to an estrogen therapy pill called “Flova Scotia” that makes him take on unfunny, supposedly “female” traits — or simply outdated locker-room antics, like the team’s insistence on shaving Rabbit’s nether regions.
A montage devoted to supposedly fresh takes on the troupe’s signature, pulled-over-by-the-cops jokes that made the original so much fun, rarely land.
Regardless, Super Troopers 2 is surprisingly fresher and more put-together than one might expect from an aging, exceptionally silly, one-hit wonder comedy troupe.