Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day

Unlike Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, Countdown to Liquor Day is actually in continuity with the series and continues the story, wrapping it up once and for all. It's kind of hard to keep making sequels when the main characters implore the people with the cameras to fuck off already. I liked this more than the previous movie, though not as much as the series itself. A lot of its strengths are on full display, with the main characters as strong as ever and some great comic moments you wouldn't find anywhere else. You just don't usually see this much urination involved in a high speed car chase. Considering that this is apparently the last hurrah for the series, I expected more characters to show up - there's no Cory and Trevor, no Barb, no antagonists besides Mr. Lahey. Several minor characters do pop up here and there in cameo appearances, but I would have liked a bigger, more involving story. The dynamics that are still in place are good though, and it's a solid goodbye for most of the characters.

Like I said though, I didn't enjoy it as much as the show, and there are a few reasons. There aren't enough new people around. There's only a couple new characters with any real screen time, and none of them really make lasting impressions or even have a single memorable line. This leads to the story revolving around the boys versus Lahey yet again, and frankly, while they still find good material there, I'm just a bit tired of it at this point. Hey look, they're butting heads, and Lahey's getting extremely drunk again. The second act of the film definitely seems to drag a bit, and I wish things just got mixed up a little more than they did. You can only go back to the exact same beats so many times. The climax is exciting and funny, I just wished there was a bit more invention to these characters' farewells.

Trailer Park Boys

Trailer Park Boys the show is more or less what the movie suggested - a series about a trio of career criminals who live in a trailer park and try to pull off schemes to get rich (or rich for a trailer park resident, anyway) while constantly getting drunk, stoned, and in trouble with Mr. Lahey, the park's supervisor. Each season has a pretty recognizable formula - a few people (usually Ricky and Julian) get out of jail, get acquainted with the current situation in the park, and proceed to turn that on its head with their plans and petty crimes. The three main characters are a great little group. Julian is the leader who never seems to live up to his own potential, maybe because he basically lives his whole life with a mixed drink in his hand; Ricky is the one at the center of most conflicts, with a peculiar take on the English language and a short temper; Bubbles is weird looking and loves cats, and often has to be protected by his friends, but also has a sinister streak at times.

The show's not just them though -  over the course of the series you meet a ton of the park's residents, including the previously mentioned Lahey and his assistant Randy, who never puts a shirt over his huge gut; Corey and Trevor, who adore the main characters and act like pets around them, and a whole bunch of others. There's no one really recognizable in the show, besides a young Ellen Page as Lahey's daughter in the second season, but the casting benefits the series, as everyone fits their part perfectly and will do anything, no matter how unglamorous, to further the story or just get a laugh. The plots the boys cook up rarely get terribly complicated, but there's an intricacy and excitement to the chaos that always follows that keeps it from getting stale, and the show is just a fun mix of humor and an oddly entertaining bumbling crime drama. The mockumentary angle doesn't make a ton of sense, since I can't imagine anyone, even if they're as dumb as these guys, letting a crew film things like their massive marijuana operation or a supermarket heist, but like most shows with this issue, it doesn't really make it less fun to watch, and provides a few entertaining opportunities. The show ran for seven years last decade, and while it's not my favorite comedy of the period, it was certainly a good time for its entire run.

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie

I've never seen the highly improvised Canadian series, but I probably will now after seeing the movie, which seems to be pretty much the same thing. It's very crass, pretty strange and damned hilarious throughout. Part of the appeal is the Canadian accents, which are just different enough from what I usually hear to make listening to most characters a little more enjoyable, and combining it with the strange life views of the residents of Sunnyvale Trailer Park. It's just foreign enough from real experience to make the juxtaposition somehow funnier. Like the series I guess, it's somewhat of a mockumentary, with periodic interview segments with the characters, although the rest of the movie isn't really filmed like the crew is part of the scene, which shows like The Office always try to make seem legitimate. It's not really a distraction, though.

What makes the movie great is the characters. They're all unique and bizarrely comical in their own way. Ricky manages to be a likable protagonist despite being kind of a dick the entire time. Julian is a lot of fun too, kind of smarter than anyone else but still dumb enough to remain part of their backwards lifestyle. Bubbles is the most obviously weird, although he manages to avoid being a gimmick pretty well. Leahy and Randy are a solid villain and henchman combo, and a particular scene showing off Leahy's immense ability to drink made me laugh more than anything else in the movie. The plot's not really original or anything, but it's a perfect background for the absurdity that happens for an hour and a half as the good guys try to get one last big score before going back to growing dope and getting their lives back together without getting evicted from the park or sent back to jail. Totally worth checking out for fans of comedy.