Super Troopers 2

If you ever need to sober up quick, come down hard, flush out your system, convince the cops or your boss or the feds that you've not indulged in marijuana, might I recommend taping your eyes wide open and taking in Super Troopers 2? The sequel is so profound a buzzkill they could sell it at GNC as a detox kit. No high can survive it. It slays fun dead, grinds cannabinoids to dust and maybe even wipes the mind of the warmth you might hold for the original Super Troopers. That chipper, defiantly inconsequential stoner comedy captured in its warm aimlessness and eruptions of dada something like the feeling of wondering, on a giggly day off, whether the edibles have kicked in yet. The follow-up, arriving 17 years later, never kicks in. It's sober as a judge, even during its rote scenes of drug freakouts.

Like the first Super Troopers, from 2001, this edition is directed by Jay Chandrasekhar and written and performed by Broken Lizard, a comedy collective distinguished by a farty, fratty, childish sensibility. The first film was more a playdate than a narrative, a what-if? goof that imagined a squad of Vermont highway patrolmen who passed their days pranking motorists. It could have been called Improv Cops.

Nothing's chill in Super Troopers 2. The film opens with a dreary fakeout, and then, with much rushed shouting, a plot kicks in, a dumb one even by the standards of Super Troopers. The crew heads to Canada: Cue the fake French accents, soar-ee as "sorry," cracks about hockey and health care and a seemingly endless bear attack scored to the roots-rock equivalent of Benny Hill's theme.