Super Troopers Isn't Highly Exceptional But It Has Its Share of Solid Laughs

So now that Super Troopers 2 didn't work out, let's go back in time and look at how exactly the first Super Troopers holds up. Despite being a widely beloved comedy, I had not seen this debut motion picture from the Broken Lizard comedy troop until this past Friday. Having now seen it, I'm afraid I can't count myself as one of the devotees of this specific movie, but more happily, I also cannot count myself as one who has disdain for this original Super Troopers. This original Super Troopers is a decently humorous movie with some memorable gags even if it can't quite sustain itself for its 100-minute runtime.

Like Anchorman 2 And Zoolander 2 Before It, Super Troopers 2 Is An Unfunny Retread of A Superior Comedy

Toss Super Troopers 2 onto the tragically large pile of long-in-the-works comedy sequels that failed to bring the laughs, following in the footsteps of Anchorman 2, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Zoolander 2. An extended length of time between installments didn't help that trio of comedy sequels and it certainly hasn't helped the lackluster Super Troopers 2. The majority of the film consists of either references to its predecessor's most memorable gags or just a handful of new unfunny jokes constantly being rehashed. Oh, and lots of screaming, there's an incessant amount of shouting in this movie that ended up making me feel like an old man asking his next-door neighbors to turn their dadgum loud music down.

Churchill Surrenders Talented Actors To Lackluster Storytelling

From time to time, a fascinating occurrence transpires in Hollywood filmmaking in that two films with similar plots get released in close order to each other. Think of how Deep Impact and Armageddon both were large-scale disaster movies about massive asteroids headed for Earth released between April and July of 1998. A pair of magician dramas from 2006, The Illusionist and The Prestige, provide another great example of this as does Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down choosing to tell action-packed tales of the White House being under siege. Of course, that whole Antz/A Bug's Life debacle of Fall 1998 is likely the most famous example of this. Our newest entry in this trend is a pair of Winston Churchill biopics released in the span of six months in 2017. One of them is Darkest Hour starring Gary Oldman, the other is Churchill and the latter happens to be the subject of this review.