Up in smoke, from the trailer park to Ottawa
All right boys (and girls), this is the way it’s supposed to be.
The Trailer Park Boys are back with a third movie, an astonishment unto itself, and you’re just going to have to like it. Or not.
It’s a free country, last I checked, and one that has embraced these knuckleheads like a mother pig does a brood of sucklings, on screens big and small and also on stage.
But chances are you’ll crack at least a smile or two at the continuing antics of Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian (John Paul Tremblay), goggle-eyed Bubbles (Mike Smith) and their other lunkheaded pals at the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.
Wonder of wonders, Trailer Park Boys: Don’t Legalize It (a.k.a. Trailer Park Boys 3) actually has an idea in its stoned noggin. It plays off the idea of Ricky losing his profitable marijuana trade if Ottawa makes good on a promise to legalize weed. Ricky, Bubbles and Julian have to stop this, eh?
The movie opens with the funeral of a secondary character. It’s in a junkyard, “a place that most of us would rightly call the dump,” Bubbles observes in his eulogy. Ricky helpfully adjusts Bubbles’ fly as he speaks.
The film still uses the same mocku- mentary approach, which is starting to seem lamer than a Stephen Harper rock performance. The ShakyCam is particularly annoying, and the speaking to camera seems pointless. But whatever.
Julian, who is never without a drink in his hand, especially when driving, is running a scam to collect urine at a military base, through a secret latrine pipeline, which he sells in test tubes to people hoping to evade drug tests. He has a semi-civil business relationship with Cyrus (Bernard Robichaud), a local drug dealer.
Meanwhile, Bubbles gets an important letter in the mail. Upshot is that all three pals have reason to leave Nova Scotia on a road trip that will take in Montreal, Ottawa and Kingston.
There’s also a bit of a trip down memory lane when the boys discover a photo album with photos of them as children together. Awww . . .
Their usual antagonists, Jim Lahey (John Dunsworth) and his shirtless sidekick Randy (Patrick Roach), are still plotting to have the boys evicted from the trailer park. Randy drives a Segway. He’s always been a tool.
Trailer Park Boys 3 gets a bit repetitive at times (did you notice that “3” in the title?) and the jokes are so old they have beards, as my mother used to say.
But you’ve got to take your toque off to a dumb movie that is clever enough to try to rook Ottawa politicians into doing the right thing for the wrong reason. As Ricky so succinctly puts it: “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like telling the government to f--- off!”