Fired for their previous shenanigans, former Vermont Highway Patrol officers Thorny, Farva, Rabbit, Foster and Mac get a shot at redemption from Capt. O'Hagan and Gov. Jessan. The wacky quintet must provide law enforcement for a French Canadian town that's transitioning to U.S. sovereignty.
As you may guess, 'Super troopers 2' is another long awaited sequel to the first successful comedy film, released in 2001. The first film recieved mixed reactions, with IMDB giving it a fair '7.1' rating out of 10, now the sequel is here, will this film be able to prove that sequels for films can be good and enjoyable?
My first point for this film in general is that as a comedy, I feel that element puts this film at a disadvantage before it has even begun, simply due to the fact that comedy films are so difficult to actually make funny instead of cheesy or awkward. Also different audiences have different senses of humour, which again positions this film in a difficult starting position. What I will say though, is that this film performed the job of a comedy very well, I went into the cinema not expecting to be fully entertained, but an hour and a half later I couldn't be more surprised! I really feel that the variety of jokes and gags within the film were enjoyable, even though some of them were slightly recycled from long ago, I felt like this was a really refreshing film to experience as it is definitely something I haven't seen since the days of 'Grown-Ups'! Like I said, I feel that comedies are really subjective to the audience and even though the film didn't seem too popular I feel that those that were watching the film thoroughly enjoyed it and I even heard a few laughs throughout the film too.
I feel that the film was really well structured and organised too, I like the idea of a flashback at the beginning of the film and the whole plot and scenery reminded me of the film 'Grown Ups', which I thought was quite a funny film - however childish it seemed! I feel that at times the story progressed too quickly but overall I was impressed with how the film was able to guide the audience through the story to educate them on what was currently happening in the characters eyes. And again, I saw a significant similarity in this film to 'American Pie', which is an absolute classic of a film! Due to the types of characters and how they communicated and acted with one another. I thought that the jokes and puns gave the audience a sense of refreshment too, they mainly weren't overused and unfunny jokes but mainly gags such as rewiring the speaker so it had a live current going through it - shocking the characters who came into contact with it. This is the type of humour within the film, cheap gags, but gags that make all types of audiences smile and some laugh. I also really like how the characters were portrayed too, I feel that the actors in the film were all really good at portraying their character and the traits to the audience, to ensure that the audience had a clear understanding of who the different characters were and their importance within the film. The camera angles and choice of camera shots were really good too, through a variation of dash camera shots to give the audience an impression of actually being there with the characters to much wider camera angles to not only show the characters but also their surroundings and the great sceneries!
Beforehand I thought that having a typical American set film with a group of friends going to solve a problem would be far too unoriginal, as it has been done too many times before, but this film seemed to use a different approach. By actually allowing the audience to get close and see the variety of characters close up, I feel this really gave the audience a much better impression of the film and greatly helped in a comedy aspect. The film seemed to reference other successful film/programmes too, such as a scene with a group of children on leads positioned like that from the Walking Dead which again, I found refreshing.
Was the film funny? Yes. Did the film challenge typical ideas about how an American based comedy should interact with its audience? Possibly. Did the film have a solid plot and storyline? Unfortunately not. For the first half an hour of the film I was left clueless as to why everything was happening, I wasn't even aware that the characters were all ex-police officers until the audience was informed well into the film. I wasn't sure why the characters had left their building site to go fishing in Canada and I certainly wasn't sure why the group of 4 didn't welcome the other member too. Many parts initially of this film were left to the audience to decipher and work out for themselves, which for some audiences, may ruin the film as not understanding the beginning is likely to sabotage the whole film; simply due to the importance of the start. I also feel that the storyline moved far too quickly too, the characters seemed to be in one place in one scene and a completely different place the next, which I found confusing and made it difficult to keep up with the overall plot of the film.
I also wasn't particularly impressed with the audio which is a first, I usually really like the effect the audio has in films, but this time I just didn't feel that it had an important impact or in fact a need to be there. It was all background music that didn't really help with the mood of the film that it was trying to portray, and it honestly felt as if it had just been put in those sections of the film just to say that it had background music in. To make matters worse, the music choices were boring with no up to date music to support the film to a younger audience. Linking to this, I feel that the advertising campaign for this film was also very poor - I never saw any film trailers or advertisements for this film and even though there were no large 'A-List' actors in the film I still feel that it could've been utilized much better to attract audiences. As any film can be unsuccesful if it is not very well known about and managed with a poor advertising campaign! Despite me saying that the audince had a good representation of the characters, I feel that it wouldn't have done any harm for the film to have shown the audience just a bit more about the characters so we could've got to know their personalities just a bit better. As the audience weren't given too long (90 minutes) to get to know the characters and I feel that a little bit more time could've been utilised in the film to show the characters with their wives or by themselves just to show a little bit more about them - which I believe would have had a really big and positive impact.
Even though this film used a stereotypical set of Canadian "sorry" jokes and an American vs Canadian 'fat shaming' contest to challenge typical film representations, I still feel that the poor plot and audio choices do drag the film down simply because the audience had to fend for themselves and it was a race against time to work out what was happening and why. Although I must admit I feel that this film was very funny and used a smart sense of humour to really set off the genre again, it was unlike anything else out at the cinema right now!
Overall, I would rate this film a 7.5 as it seemed only slightly ameteur due to the audio and plot issues but on the contrary it was very enjoyable and caused the audience to have the desired effect of promoting a humourous film environment! And to answer my initial question, yes I do feel that this film has shown that some sequels can be better than their originals, however difficult it can be! Although as awkward as it sounds, the Stiffmeister was a great sight to see at the start of the film!!
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did watching the film and writing the review. I hope you have a lovely day! :)
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