Movie: Super Troopers 2

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

One toke over the line

Plot Overview

A Vermont Highway Patrol vehicle stalks a closed motor bus down a deserted highway. They follow a hypnotic yellow line till patrol­man Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske) pulls it over and asks them to turn down their radio. It's not a radio but a band practicing inside. He and his partner Mac (Steve Lemme) check it out (“Coming on board”) to discover their old super trooper pals, the highway cops who became local cops, got fired, and then formed a band called Cracklin' Bacon—i.e. pigs. They got discovered on “America's Got Talent,” and now they're on tour. Rabbit and Mac are flabber­gasted at discovering their favorite band. Cracklin' Bacon has teamed up with Juice Newton, and “Juicy Lucy” is right through the rear door. Opening it is a move right from her song, “Playing with the queen of hearts / Knowing it ain't really smart.” Following their heart is not so smart; it leads to unintended consequences, like JN's “Thinking 'bout a life of crime” (“We should probably hide that body.”)

Back in the real world Rabbit and Mac are doing endless construction work under an insuffer­able foreman Farva (Kevin Heffernan). A surprise phone call and meeting with Uncle Argyle lands them an opportunity to form a troop again, under Captain O'Hagen (Brian Cox), to patrol the environs of St. Georges du Laurent, formerly of Canada, now remapped to U.S. territory. They have a two-week grace period to see how they'll do.

Their elation is short-lived. They had a hard enough time negotiating their own culture; now they have to relate Canadian (“This is bad, fellows.”) The starting good­will of the laid back Canadians evaporates to the point where one of the Mounties suggests maybe they should burn down our White House again. To the blank, stupid looks of the Americans, he refers them to the War of 1812 and wonders that we don't know our own history.

Ideology

J.B. Mozley D.D., in his sermon on Devotion writes of congregating for worship: “It is a time when we are taken out of our daily world. Every­thing around us reminds us of the reality of religion” (28). The teacher of my movie class draws an analogy between that and to meeting in a quiet, darkened theater to attend to the big screen. Despite their best intentions, how­ever, some “have felt them­selves disturbed, and found it difficult to keep up such ideas as they wanted to, in consequence of the fact of it's being a public scene, containing ordinary people and common things” (Mozley 30). ST2 tries to suggest a history lesson, but that can be swamped by all the crude humor in the plot. I suggest that this movie of an alignment between the United States and Canada, of including one's former territory into the other's, has an historical precedent in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” where a King from France ruled peaceably over Great Britain for a time. In “Robin Hood” I traced its history through the Crusades, back to two sons of Noah, Shem and Japheth, who were slated to share their residence peace­fully, (Gen. 9:27) “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” Since Canada continues the history of France and America the history of England, I'll just let my historically curious reader follow the link to my earlier review.

A brief history lesson from T. Harry Williams et al is in order here. It mentions:

the ancient controversy of the North Atlantic fisheries and American rights off Canadian shores—. Another dispute involved the location of the boundary between the United States and British Columbia in Puget Sound. … ¶The question of the Puget Sound boundary was sub­mitted to the German Emperor, who ruled in favor of the United States title to the contested San Juan Islands. … The real and enduring significance of the procedure was that again the two countries—as they had been doing since 1818—adjusted serious differences with­out resulting to force. (110–11)

That brings us past 1812 to the two countries getting along after the disaster of the White House, as the two brothers since Noah's flood disaster were able to get along.

Now we can look for historical markers in the movie. The big rig bus in the opening scene resembled a box, which is what the word ark means, like a wooden chest. The “Queen of Hearts” could represent Noah's wife. Calling her “Juicy Lucy” could be similar to the reference (Deut. 34:7) “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” James Michener writes of it in one of his books, “'nor his natural force abated.' But in our Hebrew original this last eulogy on a great man ends, 'His moisture was not fled.' … 'He could still function in bed'” (198f). Here is a point of historical controversy: why when God wanted the survivors of the flood to repopulate the earth, did Noah have no more children after it? One suggested answer was that “Juicy Lucy” was just too old to bear any more. Okay.

Shem and Japheth were full brothers, Ham was born at a later date (the youngest, see Gen. 9:24) perhaps from a different mother. Noah's wife was older than he was. Perhaps at 600+ years of age she was no longer able to bear children. Maybe she actually stopped bearing before the flood, and Ham was step­brother of the other two.

Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs posits that, “Although Jasher specific­ally references the births of Japheth and Shem, there is no such reference to the birth of Ham. … that Ham may have been much younger than his brothers and that he may have had a different mother” (389). Combs also observes, “Fathering a child, particularly a son, through a hand­maiden or servant girl would not have been an uncommon or forbidden practice in that time period” (165). Historian Kenneth M. Stampp remarks that “Apologists for slavery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of civilization and showed that it had always existed in some form until their own day” (14).

Juice Newton's lyrics seem to favor the interpretation of a handmaid bearing Noah's youngest son Ham: “Lovers, I know you've had a few / But hide your heart beneath the covers / And tell 'em they're the only one.”

One of the Canadians asks racially ambiguous Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn (Jay Chandrasekhar), “Are you a jigger-man?” He was referring to jiggers (chiggers) as fish bait, but Thorny wondered if it were a racial reference. Civil rights advocate Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) had complained of: “when your first name becomes ‘nigger’.” But that use is sanctified by the Bible, (Acts 13:1) “Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as … Simeon that was called Niger.” Niger is the Latin word for black (from which are derived several N–words). Simeon was called that, and as a term of respect in his day as he was a prophet or teacher. One of the four sons of Ham (Gen. 10:6) is Cush. Cush in Hebrew means black, who migrated to Africa after the Flood. So we're back to the flood story again, but with Noah's youngest of three sons Ham in play. The movie “Black Panther” started with a fictional account of the beginning of blacks in Africa, in response to which I included a brief biblical account of them in my review of “Black Panther” and linked it to the Robin Hood material. Follow the history there if you're interested.

There's a notorious incident recorded in Genesis 9:20-23 where Ham the son of Noah spied his father drunk and uncovered in his tent, and he mocked him. There's much speculation what this meant. Did it have some­thing to do with Noah's marital relations? Ham was supposed to have done something to him, Gen. 9:24, some speculate a castration. What is known is the word uncovered is reflexive, i.e. he uncovered him­self. In this movie it is Rabbit who is covered by female liaison Genevieve (Emmanuelle Chriqui) who does a dramatic self-uncovering, as well. Rabbit will get wounded in the stones. And then both sides of cops will see he's covered by a sheet resembling the Japanese flag—for its central red spot.

Noah blesses his first two sons for respectfully covering him up, but he curses the third Ham through Ham's youngest son Canaan, Gen. 9:25-27; Ham's descendants are to be slaves to the descendants of Noah's other two sons. In our Troopers 2 movie it's some under­age drivers who represent the youngest son Canaan as the driver of the punishment. The Canaanites were due for destruction, but the Gibeonite branch did a deal with Joshua (Joshua 9:24-27) to have their lives spared in favor of being bond­men, which was more to their liking. A lot of wicked people were wiped out in the Flood, but Ham got a better deal. Canaan is the youngest son of Ham, carrying the curse on the whole family forward as Ham, we suppose, reached back to his mother's evil influence. It's a figure of speech called a synecdoche where part stands for the whole. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.” The Ante­diluvian earth had been (Gen. 6:11) “filled with violence.” Now Noah notes what Ham had (Gen. 9:24) “done unto him.” Because of bringing wickedness into this cleansed world, Ham's progeny was cursed with servitude to the progeny of his two better brothers. Also Ham, the brother from another mother, had an evil imagination like unto (Gen. 6:5) what was part of the wicked world that God had just destroyed. In our movie this is dealt with in the abstract, hidden booty of drugs (wicked imagination) and arms (violence) that has to be rooted out before borders could be established. This within our racial analogy brings us back to the “gradualism” that MLK so despised, but it can't be helped.

To any reader's protest asking should not we descendants of Japheth and/or Shem be willing to share some or all of our Noahic blessing with descendants of Ham, I refer you to Grace Goldin's Midrash on Ruth (36–7):

“You were too harsh with Orpah,” Ruth declared. “Had you but coaxed her as she dared you to She might have gone the difficult way with you.” “We are forbidden bribery, my Ruth,” Replied Naomi, marching steadily now … “Since only those who come with extreme love For heaven and heavenly things, and love of God, Are welcome to be Jews.”

Production Values

This sequel, “” was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. It was written by Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Erik Stol­hanske & Paul Soter. It stars Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, and Steve Lemme. The actors have aged a bit since their original “Super Troopers”, but they dieted for the picture and did a capable job of not acting their age.

MPAA rated it R for crude sexual content and language throughout, drug material and some graphic nudity. The script was about what you'd expect from its having graduated from the first “Super Troopers”: not much maturing of the characters in order to appeal to their target fans. That said, they mixed up the joke content, though the level of humor remains the same through­out. The plot is pretty stupid, but there is a historical sense beneath the surface if we look for it. Its release date was 20 April 2018 (USA), close to Saint George's Day, 23 April, in the UK. This is the saint who was paid homage to by the movie's Canadian town.

Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation

This one lacked the novelty of the first, of course. I did not harbor inflated expectations, so I wasn't disappointed. I really liked the first one. This one was okay.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall product rating: Four stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, print.

Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.

Goldin, Grace. Come Under the Wings, A Midrash on Ruth. Philadelphia: The Jewish Society of America, 1958, 1980 / 5740. Print.

Juice Newton. “Queen Of Hearts.” Lyrics by Dave Edmunds. © BMG Rights Management US, LLC.

King Jr., Martin Luther. Letter From Birmingham Jail. 1963. Print.

Michener, James. The Source. (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1965) Print.

Mozley D.D., J.B. Sermons Parochial and Occasional. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1880. Print.

Stampp, Kenneth M., Professor of American History at the University of California (Berkeley).
   The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Vintage Books, 1955. Print.

Williams, T. Harry, Richard N. Current, and Frank Freidel. A History of the United States [since 1865]. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960. Print.

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