Movie Review: 'Super Troopers 2'

Super Troopers 2 is about as good as the mediocre Broken Lizard comedy group could make it. Seventeen years after the original Super Troopers achieved a modest cult following for the shenanigans of the Vermont Highway Patrol, the group has reformed for a sequel filled with the same Bro-ey, self-satisfied mediocrity that made up the first film and somehow made Broken Lizard a commodity.

More than a decade after being kicked off the Vermont Highway Patrol following a ride-along that killed actor Fred Savage, our heroes are getting another chance. Rabbit (Erik Stolhanski), Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar), Mac (Steve Lemme), and Foster (Fred Soter) have been suffering for more than a decade under the wrath of fellow former patrolman, Farva (Kevin Heffernan), now their boss on a construction site.

After getting a call from their former Captain, O’Hagan (Brian Cox), the boys are informed that a part of the Canadian border now belongs to the United States and is now under the jurisdiction of the Vermont Highway Patrol. For reasons that are never made clear, aside from perhaps the Captain sleeping with the Vermont Governor Jessman (Linda Carter), the boys are given their jobs back and will assume the duties of policing the newest town in America.

Our heroes are to take over the small town from a contingent of Canadian Mounties, headed up by characters played by Tyler Labine, Will Sasso and Hayes MacArthur and if you’re thinking that this leads to hijinks… well yeah. Super Troopers 2 is nearly all dimwitted hijinks featuring supposedly grown men playing out fantasy scenarios as merry pranksters who aren’t nearly as clever as they think they are.

I must admit that nothing of the style of director Jay Chandrasekhar and his Broken Lizard comedy team are my cup of tea. I didn’t laugh a single time at the original Super Troopers despite the obvious strain of the Broken Lizard gang’s attempts to draw laughs with their drawn out prankster schtick. I didn’t laugh during Super Troopers 2 either; likely because they’ve recycled many of the jokes from the original movie.

A bit that fans loved from the first film which involved our heroes trying to use the word ‘Meow’ as many times as possible during a traffic stop gets repeated here and since I didn’t find it particularly clever the first time around, I wasn’t impressed by the greatest hits reprise here. That said, according to the Super Troopers fans I have spoken with, this bit is the Broken Lizard equivalent Zeppelin going on stage to play “Stairway to Heaven.”

I fully admit, I don’t get what is so funny about Broken Lizard’s approach to comedy. The group is smug and self-satisfied and the humor has the ugly quality of the locker room humor of bullies. They are playing pranks left and right and yet they only appear to be entertaining themselves. The pointlessness of each prank only grows as what there is of a story plays out, witlessly stretching the film to an unnecessary 110 minutes.

I can sense what is supposed to be funny here but I can also sense how uninspired all of these gags are. The film spends far too much time trying to upend hack takes on how polite Canadians are and how boorish Americans are, a sitcom conceit that was beaten into the ground by numerous sitcoms any time characters ventured north of the border. Having Canadians be less than polite apparently counts as satire in the world of Broken Lizard and Super Troopers 2.

I don’t hate Super Troopers 2 or Broken Lizard, I just don’t see the appeal of their brand of comedy. I can see where it is intended to be funny but because I have seen dozens upon dozens of far funnier movies play out the same ideas with more finesse and care, nothing Broken Lizard brings to the table in either the original Super Troopers or Super Troopers 2 makes me laugh. But that’s just me; I have seen way more movies than most other people. If you haven’t seen a lot of similar comedies, perhaps the comedy of Super Troopers 2 will appeal to you.