What's old is new again, as always, in Hollywood
When it comes to Hollywood, if you wait long enough for something, it will eventually happen. Everything has an audience somewhere. You can guarantee that in some small corner of the internet, there’s a hardcore fan base for Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, just waiting for their chance to crowdfund a Breakin’ 3: TBD.
It’s just part of the culture of nostalgia that permeates our society. When a piece of pop culture impacted your life at a young age, it’s easy to wish for that experience again. It seems like every popular movie or show from my childhood has gotten an update in recent years: ThunderCats, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, etc.
The success of these franchises has run the gamete of complete failure to fair-to-middling to wildly popular, often based on the strength of the original material. Even now, our prime time television is lousy with new versions of old hits like Roseanne, One Day at a Time, Will and Grace, and The X-Files.
Movie and television shows won’t take a chance on new material because there’s too much money to be collected off the nostalgia of things that were once passé.
This week in nostalgia programming is Super Troopers 2, the sequel to a seventeen-year-old cult comedy by comedy troupe Broken Lizard. The film is a stale rehash of a movie that worked in 2001 but feels a bit dated now. It’s not any worse than any other Hollywood retread, however.
Super Troopers, and Broken Lizard, might be easily forgettable. The original film was only popular with a certain demographic—young, white pot enthusiasts. The film wasn’t especially notable, but got by simply on the likability of the cast.
I always had the impression that the writing was solid, but the delivery could have been handled a bit better by a stronger cast. The timing always felt slightly off. The same can be said for subsequent Broken Lizard Films (save Club Dread, which was vastly underrated and overshadowed by Super Troopers). Revisiting the Super Troopers property seventeen years later feels like vanity. The project was crowdfunded initially, raising $2 million dollars in seed money in 24 hours. The demand, it seems, was there.
But it doesn’t seem like the Broken Lizard fellas were up to the task. Much of the film features call backs to old jokes in the first, and the new jokes are lazy and Canadian. That’s because the film moves locations slightly, from northern Vermont to southern Canada.
The plot of the film involves a border dispute between the U.S. and Canada, ending in the annexation of a Canadian town. The Highway Patrol Boys are back in uniform after having been fired for a ride along incident involving Fred Savage. They are tasked with patrolling the new area, causing them to have run-ins with Mounties, apologetic Canadians, and the French language. It all feels stale and silly, with jokes we’ve all heard and rolled our eyes at before. And yet, by the end of the film, the cast again wins over the audience.
The Broken Lizard gang is too charming to be kept down. There’s enough in the film to elicit a few chuckles and smiles—nothing gut busting, but effective and entertaining. The film feels like a long comedy sketch that wears out its welcome, but pulls you back in with a can-do attitude and an unwillingness to give up.
The characters aren’t going to quit smiling and, by sheer force of will, they keep the audience in their grasp for most of the movie. It’s infuriating and inviting all at the same time.
Still, Super Troopers 2 has a similar effect to paying a lot of money for tickets to see your favorite band, only to watch them put your favorite song into the middle of a medley. You’re happy to hear the chorus but resentful when they move on. You can’t help but feel cheated.
I can’t recommend seeing Super Troopers 2 in theaters—it’s just not worth the price of admission. Chances are, however, it’ll be streaming somewhere soon.
The film is worth a Saturday afternoon on the couch, especially if you can take a nap during the slow parts. You can wake up whenever, assured in the fact that you didn’t miss anything important at all.