Hey 3.5 readers. BQB here. I haven’t done this in awhile, but if you haven’t yet, please pick up a copy of my illustrious book, “Bookshelf Q. Battler’s Big Book of Badass Writing Prompts.” As you can imagine, it’s by yours truly, Bookshelf Q. Battler.
It’s available for 99 cents, which means out of a dollar, you get to keep a penny. That beats a strip club. You put a dollar in a stripper’s G-string and she’s keeping it. She’s not going to spit out a penny out of God knows where.
You shouldn’t be going to such houses of ill repute anyway, perverts.
Look, it really is the most fun you can have for a dollar (and still get to keep a penny). If you can think of a better time for 99 cents then tell me about it in the comments and I’ll stand corrected.
BQB here with a review of the long awaited, “Super Troopers 2.”
Ahh, “Super Troopers.” It’s one of those cult classic films. I don’t believe it was much of a breakout success when it came out in 2001, but over time, comedy aficionados spread the news of its glory through open mouth and I admit, whenever I catch it on TV, I watch and I laugh and laugh and laugh.
The original was brilliant in its stupidity. The Broken Lizard boys, a bunch of friends who formed a movie making comedy troop, really managed to catch lightning in a bottle in that movie. And to their credit, they understand a brand of comedy that’s becoming more and more forgotten, namely, a style that isn’t quote unquote “woke,” it’s not educational, it’s not trying to educate you or make you a better person…it’s just about trying to make you laugh. Fart jokes. Dick jokes. Sex jokes. Drug jokes. Jokes your Grandma will not approve of.
Can you ever go home again? By asking that, I mean, were these guys able to recreate the magic of the original? The brief version – no, I think once you make something that really knocks an audience’s socks off, it’s hard to do it again. It’s not that this movie isn’t funny, it’s just that the first one was so much funnier.
This go around is more or less a rehash of the last. In the original, the boys sparred with a local police department while trying to break a drug ring. Here, they also spar with a local police department while trying to break a drug ring.
There’s a notable difference though, namely, that there’s a town on the Canadian border that, due to some political wrangling, is about to be annexed to the United States. The troopers, down on their luck and long out of the law enforcement game due to some “shenanigans” are called back into action to rejoin the Vermont highway patrol and keep the new town safe.
This isn’t an easy task, seeing as how the Canucks are none too pleased at the concept of being Yanks. Canadians are lampooned as hyper sensitive, perverted French tree people Americans are sent up as obese, stupid, overly patriotic imperialists. Meh, both stereotypes are probably fair to a certain extent.
So many comedy sequels fall into the trap of rehashing old, popular jokes from the first film. I heard two of the guys on a podcast talking about the pressure they faced from fans on the Internet – repeat all the old jokes but make it original!
It’s clear from the film that’s not something the dudes wanted to do out right. Thus, they pay homage to the jokes, they’re acknowledged, the cap is tipped to them though they aren’t necessarily repeated. For example, in the first film, the outrageous douche Farva comes close to blows with a teenage drive-thru clerk who doesn’t understand what a “liter of cola” is. This go around, Farva is in Canada, where the metric system is well-established, so the waiter at a restaurant is able to bring him liters of cola to his heart’s content. To repeat the joke would have been to have Farva kick another drive thru nerd’s ass over the misunderstanding but the homage is that at long last, Farva found a restaurant worker who knew what “a liter of cola” meant.
It’s dumb. It’s silly. At some point when you see Farva being watched through heat vision goggles and the fart clouds pop out of his butt in all their red heat signature glory, you realize you’re getting a much needed break from the new, godawful, PC, “don’t hurt anyone’s feelings,” woke brand of virtue signaling comedy. Let Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Oliver bitch about politics…I’m going to check out and watch the Broken Lizard boys yuck it up for awhile.
Rob Lowe stars as the Mayor of the Canadian town in question. As usual, he looks like he’s struck a deal with the devil to remain so handsome (it’s not gay if I say that, right?) well into his older years and…well, there’s one joke that I won’t give it away but you wonder just how the Broken Lizard crew managed to talk him into it.
In summary, it’s not as good as the first one, but in any walk of life, is the repeat of something ever as good as the first time it happened? It’s not for lack of trying and they did provide me with some uncontrollable laughs. Laughter is the most honest reaction. Either it happens or it doesn’t. Your body can’t hold it back if it wants to.
I have no idea about any behind the scenes wrangling but I do wonder if the PC wave has kept Broken Lizard from soaring. Come to think of it, 2006’s “Beerfest” was the last movie I remember seeing boobs in and I don’t remember seeing boobs in a movie again until, well, this one. I’ll have to wait to see boobs in a movie until “Super Troopers 3” I suppose. Sure, Thor and Iron Man can knock out enemies left and right and that’s ok to watch but put some fun bags in a film and “Oh my God! It’s the end of the world!”
To BL’s credit, they’re a good example of what crowdsourcing can do. They raised the money to make this film from the fans, waging an Internet campaign to raise the required loot.
Alas, in this PC age where the studios want nothing more than to jam the same exact, 1,045th copy of a film about Amy Schumer demanding to be loved despite being a drunken ho-bag, a good, old-fashioned bear attack on a jackass in a porta potty can only happen on screen now via donations from knuckle dragging troglodytes like me who want to see that sort of thing (although, I’m a cheap prick who didn’t give BL a dime, I did root them on in spirit.)
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It’s up to you if you want to see it now or wait to rent. If you’re a true super fan, you’ll want to check it out.
Bookshelf Battle 