The other day I watched and cringed as Rob Lowe, playing a very liberated mayor of a French Canadian town, playfully punched a flaccid penis like a boxer working a speed ball. It was one of those times where instead of laughing you just want the ground to open up and swallow you. Or just for the projector to break down. Or for the cinema to collapse. It was a lowe moment.....sorry.
The Vermont Supertroopers are no more. After "the Fred Savage incident" ( a running joke paid off in the closing credits that isn't worth hanging around for ) they lost their jobs and have become builders and handymen. However a curious discovery along the Vermont/Canada border leads to the U.S. annexing a section of Canada and the lads are offered their jobs back to help ease the Canadians of the area into the American way of life. Not everyone is happy about the situation though.
This wasn't good. The 2001 original wasn't the best either but at least it was filled with easy laughs and likeable characters who did their level best to wind each other up and entertain us. This absolutely unnecessary sequel is mean spirited, xenophobic, homophobic and worst of all for a comedy, flat out unfunny. The amusing opening scene aside you'll find yourself clock watching a lot during this. It's lazy stuff, full of jokes that go nowhere and scenes larking back to the original film which only serve to remind you that this isn't a patch on it. Nothing here matches the funny silliness of the meow scene from the first film and here we get a callback that actually cheapens the original joke.
Plotwise it's simple fluff that could be pissed through in the length of time of your average sitcom but it's padded out with nonsense to bring it up to a proper running time. A severely overstretched conversation about Danny DeVito will make you genuinely want to punch yourself in the face and a big set piece starring a Grizzly bear fizzles out to absolutely nothing. Speaking of the plot, it goes nowhere either and doesn't even get a proper ending. I really hope it isn't being left open for a sequel because it really really doesn't need one or deserve one. This sequel was crowdfunded by fans of the first film and going by this one they won't pay for another.
One thing this film has going for it is the fact that it brought back the vast majority of the cast from the first film. In real life these fellas work together in a comedy troupe called Broken Lizard and their real life chemistry translates well on screen. Jay Chandrasekhar and Kevin Hefferman are the stand outs amongst them and it's nice to see Brian Cox return as the captain and bring his trademark grumpiness back too. If they had better material to work with this could have been have better but nope, its all a wasted opportunity. At times you think the film is about to make fun of the current state of America but it chickens out everytime it has the chance, falling back instead on dick and fart jokes that were painful 30 years ago. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Rob Lowe (so brilliantly funny in Parks & Recreation) is the main man in the most graphic of these jokes and it just made me feel bad for him.
Don't bother with this. It's painful and I say this as a fan of the original. It has no bit of flow to it at all. It's fan service that just doesn't work.
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