The Vermont Highway Patrol - Arcot "Thorny" Ramathorn (Jay Chandrasekhar, who also directs), Jeff Foster (Paul Soter), MacIntyre "Mac" Womack (Steve Lemme), Robert "Rabbit" Rota (Eric Stolhanske), Rodney "Rod" Farva (Kevin Heffernan) and Captain John O'Hagen (Brian Cox) - return from forced retirement when a border dispute results in Canadian land possibly being on American soil. Being chosen as the border force to phase out the current Canadian Mounties, the troopers try to adjust to the Canadian way of life... With typically unprofessional results.
Let's make one thing clear; the majority of the humour in Super Troopers 2 goes for one level and stays there. There is a lot of broad stereo-typing when it comes to both the Americans and the Canadians; the jokes aimed at the Canadians, in particular, can't help but feel a little tried and tired (if you've never heard a joke about Canadian pronunciation or their love of hockey, get ready to have your mind blown). There are more than a few moments when the lack of variation on these old stereotypes gets irritating, but the goofy camaraderie of Hayes MacArthur, Tyler Labine and Will Sasso as the Canadian Mounties, along with Rob Lowe's scenery-devouring turn as local mayor Guy Le Franc and Emmanuelle Chriqui's game support as cultural attaché Genevieve Aubois, paradoxically lends some charm to their scenes no matter how long in the tooth their characterisation may be.
The actors portraying the Vermont Highway Patrol (this group of actors are also known as the 'Broken Lizard' comedy group) have solid interplay between each other; you can tell that they're worked together for a while, which actually helps to inform their characters and their relationships. This history makes certain scenes work better, and comes across more effectively through the cast's on-screen antics than through the lazy screenplay (the group wrote the script together; when five comedians come together to write a script, you'd hope for better and more consistent jokes). Out of all the Troopers, though, easily the stand-out is Brian Cox. Cox is often seen as such a serious, Shakespearean actor that it's a real joy to watch him cut loose like this, and whether the Captain is berating his men or joining in on their wacky antics, Cox is a very funny screen presence.
As a director, Jay Chandrasekhar doesn't really do much; his choice of camera techniques are fairly standard, and he fails to lend much flair to proceedings. Granted, Super Troopers 2 isn't the kind of film where you might expect to see top-tier filmmaking, but I still like to see directors do something interesting with their material. Chandrasekhar makes two wise moves, though. The first is to give everyone in the cast a chance to put their own spin on proceedings; if he hadn't done this, the film might have been downright insufferable. The second is not to make audiences feel like they must have seen the first film. I'm not saying that he doesn't copy jokes from the first film (there's a cameo which focuses on highlighting one of the first film's signature jokes), but Chandrasekhar doesn't go the route of, say, The Hangover Part 2, where so many of the jokes and story beats hang on the audience's experience with the first film ("it happened again").
There isn't much to make Super Troopers 2 a worthwhile trek to the cinema. The jokes are mostly tired, the technical credits are pretty basic in quality and neither the script or direction do much to add any flavour. But, as I said before, the cast all have a likeability and an enjoyable way of playing off each other, which makes some of the jokes land and even makes the ones that don't a little more bearable. There are also a few colourful cameos (easily the best comes during the end credits). My advice: Wait 'til the film comes out on home media, get a few friends together, have a couple of drinks and lower your expectations. Those are probably the best conditions under which to watch Super Troopers 2.
My Final Rating - 2.5 out of 5
