Super Troopers 2

As erratic and underwhelming as its predecessor, Super Troopers 2 follows the title characters as they happily come out of forced retirement to establish a new Highway Patrol station near the American/Canadian border – with the gang’s efforts stymied by combative mounties and a mysterious villain. There’s little doubt that Super Troopers 2 actually gets off to an impressively auspicious start, as the the movie opens with a fun and frequently hilarious dream sequence that is, unfortunately, not representative of the hit-and-miss narrative to come – with the film’s midsection suffused with overlong and flat-out unfunny comedic interludes. And although there are a handful of exceptions to this (eg the revelation that Kevin Heffernan’s Farva swallows his M&M’s whole), Super Troopers 2, perhaps predictably, feels as though it’s been stitched together out of less-than-polished sketch concepts to form a progressively tedious feature – which ensures, certainly, that the picture grows less and less interesting as it slowly progresses. (The somewhat interminable climactic stretch is especially ineffective, to be sure.) It’s a shame, really, given that the various Broken Lizard members come off as charismatic and affable, for the most part, with the movie ultimately rarely as much fun to watch as it surely was to make (which is true of almost every single Broken Lizard production to date, really).

** out of ****