After 25 years the new “Super Troopers” movie feels less like it needed to be made and more like a contrived excuse for a wellness check. We have no compelling reason to revisit the kooky Vermont highway patrolmen who pull high-concept pranks on speeding motorists. We’re just stopping by to make sure they’re still here and to see if they need anything. It turns out they do. They need funnier jokes.
The original “Super Troopers” was a low budget indie from a comedy troupe with something to prove, and they proved it. Broken Lizard took a bog-standard “slobs vs. snobs” story and made it funny again, with likable characters and a handful of inspired gags. There was nothing new about a silly cop movie except that Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske hadn’t made one yet, and they did a solid job of it.
It was the first of many theatrically-released Broken Lizard films which coasted on good vibes and a handful of unforgettably hilarious scenes. The “Super Troopers” themselves returned 17 years later, in a sequel whose opening scene was so breathlessly funny it somehow carried the whole, otherwise forgettable film. Now they’re back again with “Super Troopers 3.” That’s it. They’re just kinda back.
The plot kicks in when unofficial team leader Thorny (Chandrasekhar) discovers, to his horror, that his sister Sarita (Hannah Simone) is in love with his co-worker Farva (Kevin Heffernan), who is probably the worst human being alive. They’re getting married after dating for only two months, and Thorny will stop at nothing to stop it, because stopping a wedding is something people do in comedies sometimes.
Thorny thought Farva would sabotage himself, what with his boorish personality and disgusting everything else, but somehow he’s charmed Thorny’s sister and the rest of his very traditional family. So Thorny has to pull out the stops. Normally this is where the Broken Lizard crew shines, by taking a simple comedic set-up to impressive extremes, but aside from a few gross-out gags the hilarity never manifests.
The best moment in this whole storyline comes when Farva insists on eating an entire lobster, even though he’s allergic to shellfish. He throws each of his friends an EpiPen so they can all jab him when the time comes. But for some reason he inexplicably fights them off like the Incredible Hulk while he’s dying. It’s weird and it’s memorable but Thorny had nothing to do with it, so it’s hardly making the most of the premise. It’s just another weird thing Farva does and he could have done it at any time.
“Super Troopers 3” sometimes remembers, like all these movies eventually do, that it’s supposed to be a cop film. They’re investigating a string of vandalized maple syrup trucks and a new illegal drug called Canadian Crystal. Inevitably they solve these crimes, mostly by chance. This isn’t a hardboiled police procedural and nobody expects anything better or worse than for all the threads to come together in the big finale. The finale just doesn’t feel very big.
The rest of the cast has tacked on subplots, most of which go nowhere. One of the troopers broke up with his girlfriend because she wanted to buy a house together. (Oh no, what a nightmare.) Another wants to jump his cruiser over a broken down bridge to prove he’s young again. There’s also a high-tech Canadian electric car which somehow becomes the most interesting and heroic character in the movie. Finally, there’s Captain O’Hagan, who in previous films was a grumpy boss played, inexplicably, by a grossly overqualified Brian Cox. O’Hagan is now retired and has nothing better to do than putter around the station. It’s getting a little sad.
Then again the Super Troopers are still puttering around the station and that’s getting a little sad too. When you follow the same movie characters for decades you eventually realize you’re all growing up together. Thorny, Farva and the rest of these losers are just like Rocky Balboa and Antoine Doinel — yeah, I compared “Super Troopers” to “The 400 Blows,” whatcha gonna do, fight about it? — except these guys are stuck in one place and refuse to ever change.
If their extreme immaturity still served a function, like taking snooty jerks down a peg, their arrested development would seem stalwart and noble. But this time they’re only here to stop a wedding, and that’s the kind of half-baked story you would find in a low-budget straight-to-tv sequel in the 1990s, like “Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love” or the “Smokey and the Bandit” follow-ups “Bandit Goes Country” and “Bandit: Bandit Bandit.” (I swear I’m not making that last one up.)
If all you want is to see these lovable goofballs again you’d be better served watching the first two “Super Troopers” movies and reliving their good old days. Those films are still mostly funny and the new days aren’t so good. I guess it’s nice to know these dorks are still out there, alive and mostly well, but we don’t have a lot in common anymore. If the Super Troopers really want to stay in touch, in another ten years they can write us a postcard. A brief one.
