A film review by Craig J. Koban April 29, 2018

SUPER TROOPERS 2   

2018, R, 100 mins.

Comedy sequels are a very tricky business, especially when they come several years after a cherished one that became a cult hit, leaving the makers with the dubious creative task of trying to rekindle the first entry's lighting in a bottle essence.  

When the original SUPER TROOPERS opened way, way back in 2001 - one of the earliest feature films from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard - it never emerged as a major box office smash, but it nevertheless found a sizable audience later on home video, which helped elevate it to aforementioned cult status.  There was this sense that SUPER TROOPERS had this mysterious aura of discovery about it.  When I discovered it as a University student at my local video store I became enamored with the film's unpredictable and infectious brand of spirited tomfoolery.  

I told my friends about it...and they told their friends...and so on and so on. 

Broken Lizard - made up of Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Hefferman, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske - never really found much popular and critical success with their post SUPER TROOPER films (offerings like BEERFEST and THE SLAMMIN' SALMON were decent, if not forgettable, whereas CLUB DRED was awful), which, I guess, precluded the team returning to well, so to speak, with a SUPER TROOPER sequel was a foregone conclusion.  A crowd funding campaign was launched in 2015, which led to over $2 million being raised in just 24 hours, proving that there was definitely an appetite for the follow-up entry.  

Ultimately and regardless of origins, the question remains as to whether or not the 17 year wait was well worth it for SUPER TROOPERS 2, and the short answer is...sort of.  

On a positive, this sequel is not a dry rehash of the original and aims - as all good sequels should - to take the characters in new directions, which this film does.  The level of spirited hijinks in lampooning highway patrolmen is enthusiastically duplicated here, and Broken Lizard's performers remain as kooky and easily likeable as ever.  Yet, for every new gag and pratfall that works sensationally well here there are a handful of others that don't, and at a running time of well over 90 minutes SUPER TROOPERS 2 feels more needlessly self indulgent and bloated than it should be.  But when it delivers...oh my...it delivers.   

But, what has happened to the members of the Spurberry Police department over the last decade-plus?  It seems that former highway patrolmen Thorny (Chandrasekhar), Rabbit (Stolhanske), Mac (Lemme), Jeff (Soter) and (shivers) Farva (Hefferman) have lost their jobs because of a freak accident involving one famous celebrity (that I won't reveal here) getting killed while in their care during a ride alone to research a role.  The down on their luck boys are reduced to construction jobs, but are forced to deal with (shivers) the obnoxiously pig headed Farva being their foreman.  They still enjoy the odd fishing trip with their old boss in Captain O'Hagen (a very game Brian Cox) whenever they can to keep their sanity in check.  Granted, it's awfully hard for these poor saps to keep their sanity when they have Farva barking orders in their ears on a daily basis. 

Fate, as it always does, conveniently steps in for the squad in the form of Vermont Governor Jessman (Lynda Carter), who reveals to them all that a Canadian border town in Quebec - because of a laughably geographical loophole - is technically on America soil and thus will need to be baby stepped into becoming an American city.  Now, because there are, for reasons never fully explained, no other men for the job, the Governor decides to re-enlist O'Hagen and company to become officers once again and to journey to the Great White North and help segue these hockey and poutine loving hosers into proud Yankees.  The team is greeted early on by its ex-hockey player turned mayor, Guy (Rob Lowe, in a hysterically obvious wig), and his assistant Genevieve (Emmanuelle Chiqui), but some Mounties - (Will Sasso, Tyler Labine, and Hayes MacArthur) - and the local citizens take an immediate hostile dislike to the these officers trying to culturally and spiritually convert them.  It also doesn't help matters when Farva desperately tries to force the angry crowd at a town hall to shut their maple syrup holes and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. flag. 

Ample - ahem! - shenanigans ensue. 

It could be easily argued that the plot alone is just a series of sitcom worthy contrivances strung together as a closeline for the comedy...which is true.  It also doesn't take a fortune teller to discover what nefarious parties are behind a secret America to Canada underground drug smuggling ring that the troopers predictably bust wide open.  Nothing about the overall plotting of SUPER TROOPERS 2 is novel or inspired, but this is not a sequel that's guilty of remaking its antecedent, nor does it lazily mime some of its best bits (even though there are amusing call backs to the first film's most famous wordplay).  SUPER TROOPERS 2 deserves some props for trying to be different, and the complete shift in locale to Canada is welcome and a source of some of the film's best jokes, which are largely at the extent of the shared mutual distrust that the American and Canadian officers have with one another.  There's an awful lot of satirizing - in a refreshingly non-hostile manner - of Canadian customs, norms, and stereotypes, like my nation's fascination with the metric system, our peoples' obsessive desire to be polite, our adoration of Hockey Night in Canada, and how we pronounce "about" and "sorry."  Again, this isn't highbrow stuff, but SUPER TROOPERS 2 displays a frivolous sense of easygoing whimsy that's welcoming in a relative age of comedies that aim for puerile gross out gags.   

Much like its predecessor, SUPER TROOPERS 2 is gloriously and entertaining stupid throughout and when it scores big laughs (which it does frequently) it's an awfully hard film to hate.  Broken Lizard as a whole - who have aged gracefully well during the last near twenty years - have a level of nonchalant and unforced camaraderie that still carries this sequel even when it misfires.  Now, some infantile humor does permeate the film (like the group's fixated desire to shave Rabbit's genitals or how they use night vision goggles to watch Farva break wind or urinate), but it never feels aggressively mean spirited.  Other jokes score higher, like one small moment involving O'Hagen discovering that Farva eats M & M's whole, or a superb opening sequence that has one of the men dreaming that they're all traveling rock stars that sees their van plummet off of the road and down a cliff, killing them all.  One of the best bits features Thorny and Mac donning stolen Mounties garb and pulling over one Anglophone couple while engaging in a side-splitting exchange of horribly made up French words that leaves the couple dumbfounded.  Thorny also becomes the victim of a long running joke in the film after he gets addicted to a confiscated Canadian female hormonal drug called "Flova Scotia", which leaves the officer becoming more thoroughly emasculated with each new pill pop. 

The Mounties also have their moment to comedically shine, such as one of the funniest scenes in the film when they all engage in a ridiculously angry debate about the career of Danny DeVito and what films and TV shows he really starred in.  Lowe as well is staggeringly goofy as the uber Canadian mayor that runs a unisex brothel and has a penchant for lashing out with Canuck centric declarations like "Great Tim Horton's ghost!"  There's an undeniable and underlining spirit of willingness on Broken Lizard's part to do whatever is necessary to generate ample hearty chuckles throughout.  SUPER TROOPERS 2 is jam packed to the hilt with so much unbridled comic nuttiness that you just have to appreciate the troupe's enthusiastic desire to placate their fanbase that crowd funded the film in the first place.  Even when the narrative careens down some woefully predictable paths, it's the unpredictably zany chaos that Broken Lizard enthusiastically unleashes that helps keep things jubilantly afloat.