Geeks logo

Ranking the Movies of 2018: Week 15

'Super Troopers' and Amy Schumer Ranked This Week

By Sean PatrickPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
Like

Cult movies are a strange breed of cat. One can never know what will become a cult movie or why a movie becomes an underground hit. Super Troopers is a good example of this odd, unpredictable phenomenon. When the comedy group Broken Lizard broke out in 2001 with the comedy Super Troopers, no one could have predicted that the low budget comedy would become a home video juggernaut.

Indeed it happened, however, Super Troopers cost a minuscule $3 million and went on to gross $23 million at the worldwide box office and more than $70 million on home video formats. There is no good explanation for why this happened. Nothing about the low budget aesthetic of Super Troopers gives any indication as to why audiences took to the movie as they did.

You can’t predict a cult phenomenon. Something about the goofball prank based comedy of Broken Lizard spoke to something in the audience that fell in love with it. Now that Super Troopers 2 has arrived, 17 years later, the cult phenomena is now a nostalgia piece and once again Broken Lizard have found a formula for success.

I am not a fan of Super Troopers or Super Troopers 2 but I can’t help but admire it from a business standpoint. Like the original, Super Troopers 2 has a relatively low budget, a crowd-funded, $6 million budget that made a profit on its opening weekend by grossing nearly $18 million.

The Broken Lizard comedy troupe just doesn’t appeal to me. The bro-ey, self-satisfied nature of the Broken Lizard style just leaves me cold. The sequel played, for me, like a greatest hits record from a band that I don’t care for. Comedy routines from the first Super Troopers get repeated in the sequel and since I didn’t laugh the first time at the "meow" gag, I didn’t laugh when it was repeated beat for beat in the sequel.

Super Troopers 2 was not the only comedy released this weekend as Amy Schumer returned to theaters with I Feel Pretty, a comedy with a unique premise and a little controversy. I Feel Pretty tells the story of Renee, (Schumer) a woman who suffers a head injury and suddenly develops unending self-confidence.

Despite not seeing herself any different than before her head injury, Renee now has the self confidence of a super model and it begins to turn her whole life around, including helping her meet a new boyfriend and get her the job of her dreams working at a cosmetics company headed up by Michelle Williams.

I enjoyed I Feel Pretty but not wholeheartedly. The film struggles in the first hour with pacing issues as it feels much longer than it is, especially prior to the head injury plot kicking in. More troubling however, are the recurring gags that portray Schumer/Renee as unattractive. I’m of two minds on this as I do find Schumer attractive but I understand that the movie is aimed at what Schumer and the directing duo of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein see as the societal standard for beauty.

I Feel Pretty is intending to be empowering and send a message to everyone about self-care and loving who you are despite your perceived flaws but the message is muddled. Schumer sends the point home well in a final monologue at the film’s climax but the triumph feels unearned within a movie that relies to heavily on set-piece gags rather than a tight and consistent narrative.

I did get plenty of laughs from those set-pieces, especially Renee’s bizarrely empowering wet t-shirt performance and Rory Scovell’s sweet, fumbling, nice guy act, but the laughs are only tangentially related to the point that the filmmakers are intending. The gags of I Feel Pretty are seemingly at odds with the intended message. Are we to laugh at our distaff Falstaff or laugh with her?

The final new movie of the weekend was Traffik, but there isn’t much to say about that exploitative, slapped together mishmash of thriller clichés and human trafficking. Next week, it’s all about Marvel, as Avengers: Infinity War joins the rankings. My review is out now and you can get a sense that the movie is going to land relatively low on this list from reading the review here.

Also joining the list next week is the Nicolas Cage action movie, Knowing which is our “classic” on this week’s Everyone’s a Critic Podcast. The film was chosen by my co-host, Josh Adams, because the apocalyptic theme seemed to tie in a little with the near apocalypse we’re assuming from Avengers: Infinity War.

We will also be adding on a streaming challenge for this week’s episode as we have only one new movie. This means, that I along with Josh and Bob will be choosing new movies available on streaming services and bring them to the show. I will be watching the new Netflix movie, Kodachrome starring Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olson and Ed Harris.

New rankings below and new additions to the list are in bold type…

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

3. Black Swan

4. Phantom Thread

5. Black Panther

6. His Girl Friday

7. Best F®iends

8. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

9. Annihilation

10. Unsane

11. Just Charlie

12. Columbus

13. The Death of Stalin

14. Hostiles

15. A Wrinkle in Time

16. Boogie Nights

17. Foxy Brown

18. Becks

19. A Quiet Place

20. Game Night

21. Are We Not Cats

22. The Ballad of Lefty Brown

23. 12 Strong

24. Red Sparrow

25. Act & Punishment

26. Los Angeles Overnight

27. Salome & Wilde Salome

28. Switching Channels

29. Actors of Sound: A Foley Artist Documentary

30. I Feel Pretty

31. Tomb Raider

32. War Games

33. Ready Player One

34. Insidious: The Last Key

35. Sheik Jackson

36. Gringo

37. Love, Simon

38. Isle of Dogs

39. Hurricane Heist

40. Samson & Delilah

41. Heat

42. Hell’s House

43. The Last Movie Star

44. The Miracle Season

45. Blockers

46. Early Man

47. Almost Paris

48. Bloodsport

49. Reds

50. Play Misty for Me

51. Frantic

52. Beirut

53. 7 Days in Entebbe

54. Taffin

55. Super Troopers

56. Super Troopers 2

57. Samson

58. Friday the 13th

59. Rampage

60. Last House on the Left

61. Burnt Offerings

62. Paddington 2

63. Traffik

64. Pacific Rim Uprising

65. Sherlock Gnomes

66. Chappaquiddick

67. Cloverfield Paradox

68. Peter Rabbit

69. Proud Mary

70. The Mist

71. God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness

72. Den of Thieves

73. Death Wish 1974

74. Death Wish 2018

75. The Commuter

76. Fifty Shades Freed

77. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built

78. Midnight Sun

79. Forever My Girl

80. Every Day

81. Strangers Prey at Night

82. 15:17 to Paris

83. Truth or Dare

84. The Greasy Strangler

85. Maze Runner: The Death Cure

movie
Like

About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.