ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, SEPT. 23, 2009
By Steve Newton
The last film I saw that made me laugh out loud numerous times was 2006’s Trailer Park Boys: The Movie. It was freakin’ hilarious. But the new Countdown to Liquor Day left the old ribs achin’ even more. It could be the funniest Canadian movie ever made.
Director Mike Clattenburg’s raging chucklefest kicks off with the titular TPBs—Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian (John Paul Tremblay), and Bubbles (Mike Smith)—completing their latest stints in jail. Bubbles just wants to see his beloved kitties; Julian plans to convert his trailer into an auto-body shop; and Ricky—as he explains to the prison review board—figures he’ll just sell weed for a while.
When it’s time to leave, the more even-keeled Bubbles rides a corrections-service bus back to Sunnyvale while Ricky and Julian sneak out the rear of one before it even leaves the prison yard, steal a van, and drive directly to a liquor store, which they rob at gunpoint for “start-up money”.
Back at the trailer park, alcoholic supervisor Mr. Lahey (John Dunsworth) has momentarily weaned himself off booze and started up Lahey’s Luxury Estates, but he needs to acquire Julian’s trailer site for the new development’s sewage system to pass under.
In typical TPB fashion, long-standing conflicts erupt and dreams are shattered—Julian’s business fails, Ricky can’t get his Grade 12, and Bubbles’s seized cats are ransomed by the SPCA—so Julian concocts a harebrained scheme to rob a bank posing as security. Good luck not busting a gut at the sight of a wasted Lahey driving a convertible in his ratty dressing gown and trying to guzzle Jack Daniel’s while Randy pees on him from the front seat of an armoured car.