Super Troopers 2: As Silly As They Want To Be…
By Kim Hughes
Rating: B-
Calling out Super Troopers 2 for being juvenile and absurd is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel: too easy and entirely pointless. Writer/director Jay Chandrasekhar’s follow-up to his surprise 2001 hit is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a super-low-budget B-movie sequel to a super-low-budget B-movie buoyed to near-cult status by stoners and assorted knuckle-draggers.
Super Troopers 2: Note crotch area in prostrate fellow...
This time around, our titular quintet of dopey Vermont state troopers (looking decidedly older and pudgier) are tasked with managing a newly delineated American border on an area previously belonging to Quebec. That involves interfacing with the local constabulary (the RCMP of course, in full regalia with Quebecois accents thick as a slab of Oka) while making nice with the hostile locals.
A sub-plot involving cross-border contraband drags the narrative along, but really, most of the action and dialog in Super Troopers 2 is just a set-up to sight gags and winking wisecracks about metric measurements, beer, Tim Hortons, the OPP, politeness, American obesity and religious fervour and why the world’s longest undefended border is so darn wacky. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
For the benefit of 12-year-old boys, there is also much testicle play: testicles getting shaved, attacked, otherwise brutalized plus a running joke about a trooper taking female hormones and acting all girly to the point of eventually lactating.
There’s some star power, notably Rob Lowe clearly having a blast as a former hockey player-cum-mayor-cum-co-ed-cathouse-operator (could happen!) and a walk-on by onetime TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter as a cold-fish American politician. No spoilers on additional cameos… but stick around to the end.
Tellingly, prior to the screening, the audience at Super Troopers 2 were asked to shout out the nicknames of the original Super Troopers and did. Clearly, fans of the original were present and accounted for. Yet that same audience laughed less often than you might expect at a ribald, gross-out comedy in the vein of the Farrelly brothers but spiritually rooted in Porky’s.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Super Troopers 2. Written and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. Starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stohlhanke, Lynda Carter, Brian Cox, and Rob Lowe. Opens wide April 20.