Les Boys II (1998)

(On TV, August 2020) Another sequel goes foreign in Les Boys II, the follow-up to the massively successful French-Canadian hockey comedy. Once again, the ensemble cast of who was who in late-1990s Québec film comedy is back for the laughs as the team heads over to France in order to compete in an amateur hockey tournament. This time, the plot has substantially more moving parts than the first film, even though the conclusion is a forgone victory. After briefly reintroducing the substantial cast of characters at a funeral, the first source of laughter comes from the culture clash of French Canadians heading to rural France, where even the language isn’t necessarily shared. Of course, the various personal issues of the team soon create problems of their own, especially when one of the Boys can’t keep his pants buttoned up and angers the local population, and another can’t go without his cocaine supply. The subplots accumulate and start stepping on each other’s toes as the team is held up for their possessions, and can’t run to the police due to a previous incident. Despite the large cast and the characterization relying on the previous film, director Louis Saia keeps it all quite straightforward – even the comedy is usually restrained to character gags, although there is a rather good bait-and-switch involving a match between the Canadians and the Cote d’Ivoire team. (Those will long sports memories will guess that something is afoot the moment Olympian Bruny Surin shows up as the captain of the opposing team.) Otherwise, the film aims right at the French-Canadian male common denominator: hockey, laughs, buddies, women and teaching a lesson to the Europeans. Once-superstar singer Eric Lapointe is back to sing the film’s signature tunes. Les Boys II makes for rather pleasant viewing once you cut it the slack that it requires. It’s very much in-keeping with the first film, while fixing the lacklustre plot issue that plagued its predecessor. The film was a massive crowd-pleaser back in its days (ending up being 1998’s highest-grossing Canadian film) and you can see why. It’s not sophisticated, but it’s fun.