“… as good, if not better than its predecessor.”

Last night I watched Super Troopers 2, the long-awaited sequel to the cult film Super Troopers, and it actually wasn’t bad. The film picks up some time after the first one, and our favourite highway patrol cops are tasked with going to Canada to settle a border dispute. That’s really all you need to know.

Going into Super Troopers 2 I was very afraid that the film would overdo the Canadian stereotypes. You know the ones, people wearing all denim and going “Sorry” in thick accents that don’t actually sound like anyone from Canada; well surprisingly my fears weren’t realized. Sure the movie did have a lot of those stereotypes, but aside from a few characters they weren’t really overboard. And I found that the guys at Broken Lizard did a good job of consistently making the joke about them instead of about Canada. I felt that this was a brilliant compromise becasue it allowed you to have some of those dumb jokes about Canada, but also not alienate a part of your audience.

In large I found Super Troopers 2 to be a lot more competent of a movie than the first film as well. Super Troopers 2 really felt a lot more like Broken Lizard’s later stuff which I find to be more enjoyable. But that’s not to say it lost the charm of the original film, because the characters in this movie seem to pick up right where they left off. The biggest improvement over the first film is that Super Troopers 2 actually has a coherent story. Sure it may not be the greatest story or even really fleshed-out, but the difference that having a flowing story makes is huge.

Another thing I noticed about Super Troopers 2 was that the comedy was little more tame than the first film. I’m not sure if this is becasue everyone in Broken Lizard is getting older so they don’t find crude humour as funny anymore, but I found that Super Troopers 2 relied a lot on wordplay and puns. This was a change I was perfectly fine with becasue it allowed for the jokes to come quicker and a lot more subtly. The one thing I disliked about Super Troopers 2 was the unnecessary ‘callbacks’ to the jokes in the first movie. I say ‘callbacks’ becasue they essentially just used the same jokes again. They weren’t references, it was a recycling. And what made me even more angry is that people fucking ate it up. I’m not sure why, but the concept of just referencing something and getting a laugh pisses me off. Maybe it’s becasue it is lazy, or maybe it is becasue I expect more out of people than laughing at such a cheap attempt. Either way this is honestly the only flaw in an otherwise solid movie.

Overall Super Troopers 2 was a surprisingly enjoyable film. Usually sequels are unnecessary and painful to get through, but Broken Lizard seems to remember what made their first film so enjoyable becasue they did it again. I would say that Super Troopers 2 is as good, if not better than its predecessor.

I give Super Troopers 2 a B