Super Troop­ers 2

The Amer­i­can com­e­dy troupe Bro­ken Lizard were behind a 2001 film called Super Troop­ers, which can gen­er­ous­ly be described as a stoned younger broth­er to the Police Acad­e­my fran­chise. Sev­en­teen years lat­er, and the fol­low-up is here, and you could be for­giv­en for sus­pect­ing that it might, like oth­er long-await­ed sequels Zoolan­der 2 and Dumb and Dumb­er To, fail to live up to its pre­de­ces­sor. This con­cern was not near­ly enough to deter devot­ed fans, who raised a total of $4.7 mil­lion to help fund the pro­duc­tion. In return for dona­tions, they were offered incen­tives such as hav­ing a pro­duc­er title in the cred­its or a char­ac­ter named after them.

The film takes place ​“sev­er­al years” after the events of orig­i­nal, and the gang reprise their roles as dis­graced, deliri­ous Ver­mont state troop­ers. Here, they cross the bor­der to Cana­da with the objec­tive of over­see­ing the tran­si­tion of a small town’s suc­ces­sion to Amer­i­ca. Hav­ing been sacked years ear­li­er due to an ​“inci­dent” with Fred Sav­age, the team is promised future employ­ment should they succeed.

The open­ing scene fea­tures an amus­ing cameo from Sean William Scott and man­ages to cap­ture the high-octane luna­cy of the orig­i­nal film. At the end of the sequence, a drug-filled RV begins to plum­met towards its fiery death, and so too does the film. What fol­lows is a hand­ful of worth­while moments amid almost two hours of unimag­i­na­tive and tire­some jokes revolv­ing around a USA vs Cana­da theme.

The first film wasn’t a mas­ter­piece by any stan­dard and didn’t find pop­u­lar­i­ty until years lat­er, but it gained recog­ni­tion through its orig­i­nal­i­ty and sheer sense of absur­di­ty. The sequel falls flat attempt­ing to recap­ture that spark. Maybe tastes have changed since 2001, which would account for how stale it feels in com­par­i­son. Instead of chang­ing with the times, the mak­ers who, to their cred­it, slot seam­less­ly back into their roles, rely on recy­cled gags, out­dat­ed jokes and tire­some stereotypes.

Per­haps director/​writer/​star Jay Chan­drasekar want­ed to play on audi­ence nos­tal­gia and trans­port view­ers back to a time of Linkin Park and Shag­gy, but the exe­cu­tion is mas­sive­ly wide of the mark. As a result, the end prod­uct is a film unwor­thy of its pre­de­ces­sor and unsuit­able for con­sump­tion in today’s world.