Relative to its paltry budget, 2001’s Super Troopers, the second film from American comedy troupe Broken Lizard (consisting of Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske), was merely a modest success at the box office, while contemporaneous critic reviews erred on the side of unfavorable. Home video, however, brought new life and DVD sales positively erupted, with the film soon becoming a staple of beer-swilling dorm rooms and numerous re-airings on Comedy Central, effectively transforming Broken Lizard into a cult sensation overnight. Subsequent films from the team have riffed on a slasher in paradise, an underground alcohol guzzling competition, and the daily grind of restaurant life, but nothing they’ve produced since has ever quite reached the cheeky shenanigans of Vermont’s finest. Even so, the troupe remained undeterred, and after 17 years and one wildly successfully Indiegogo campaign later, they released Super Troopers 2, transplanting the lovable quintet of state troopers to the Great White North to raise more law-enforcing hell. But despite doubling their crowdfunding goal, the film was merely a modest success at the box office, while contemporaneous critic reviews again erred on the side of unfavorable, perhaps underlining a blatant case of striking while the iron was cold.
While undeniably slapdash, there is an admittedly charming quality to the original Super Troopers, which is constructed more as a series of vignettes than a cogent narrative, often operating at its best when leaning into more absurdist humor. It also helps that the Broken Lizard guys are an affable bunch, even if they lack the sharper formal and satirical chops that made a renowned group like Monty Python soar. But nothing about the original films suggests it would someday become the first entry in a trilogy, which makes the existence of Super Troopers 3 a surprise, arriving now eight years after the first sequel. While Super Troopers makes for a fine casual viewing session, Super Troopers 3 goes full bore hangout mode, hoping whatever remaining fans of franchise will be satisfied with watching these characters shoot the profane shit for 100 or so minutes. There is a central plotline involving a wedding upon which everything else is hung, but as a comedy the picture just hangs there, failing to demonstrate much enthusiasm or justify its existence. Given the minimal effort on display, it shouldn’t surprsise that Super Troopers 3 winds up being an enormous dud of a film, unable to capture that same spark that clicked with viewers a quarter century ago.
The wedding in question is that of oft-belligerent Trooper Rod Farva (Heffernan), who has improbably found love after rescuing a gal named Sarita (Hannah Simone) from a car wreck that nearly leaves her engulfed in flames. (The film’s full on-screen title includes the subtitle Farva’s Wedding.) Trouble is, Sarita also happens to be the sister of Thorny (Chandrasekhar, also filling in his regular position as director), who wholly disapproves of the marriage, reluctantly accepting the role of best man with the intention of breaking up their union, if only to halt the incessant ball-busting brought on by the rest of his department. The rest of the crew, of course, consists of: Mac (Lemme), who’s feeling inhibited by the mandated use of electric vehicles on the force, unable to relive his glory days as a speed demon on the road; Foster (Soter), currently going through his own crisis after his longtime relationship with Ursula (Marisa Coughlan) is finally coming to an end; and Rabbit (Stolhanske), the former rookie who feels contempt for new rookie Coy (Andrew Dismukes), a Gen-Z trooper who excels in every task given. Rounding out the cast is new Captain Todd (Nat Faxon), whose good-natured intentions often result in him inadvertently indulging in racial stereotypes. And even though he’s long-retired, Captain O’Hagen (Brian Cox) just can’t bring himself to leave the building, frequently popping up to dress down his men any chance he gets. Unsurprisingly, Cox ends up being the highlight of the feature.
The opening of the original Super Troopers is arguably that film’s zenith, and Super Troopers 3 hopes to kick things off on a similarly memorable note by commencing in media res with Farva’s wedding, finding the groom participating in a jaunty Bollywood-esque dance number that embarrasses Kingo’s introductory segment in Marvel’s The Eternals. The screenplay, credited to all five guys, then winds the clock back two months, introducing Sarita and her fateful meet-crash with Farva. Is it entirely plausible that this seemingly intelligent woman would suddenly fall for this human wrecking ball of a man? Of course not, but Super Troopers 3 brushes aside any and all logic, preferring silliness as its main export. Little has changed for the troopers, who are up to their old tricks, though fans of their trademark plans are bound to be sorely disappointed, as there is very little of the troopers pulling people over and engaging in traffic stop buffoonery, something that helped make the original film a hit on video. Instead, Chandrasekhar treats the project like a reunion special, ushering in an atmosphere that consists of characters furiously telling jokes over other characters furiously telling jokes, with everyone sometimes stopping to laugh at the jokes. In the way of the worst hangout flicks, Super Troopers 3 may have been a fun film to make, but it rarely lets the audience partake in its closed-off brand of merriment.
Like its two predecessors, there’s also a criminal plotline to be reckoned with, this time involving Canadian crystal meth and a pair of local ne’er-do-wells (played by Chace Crawford and Jon Rudnitsky), but it’s so thinly-sketched that it comes off as an afterthought, even though it does lead to an extended sight gag of a character being forced into a vat of maple syrup, emerging like Han Solo from his carbonite tomb. Instead, the screenplay largely focuses on Farva’s wedding preparations, which include a potentially disastrous meeting of Thorny’s parents and a bachelor party that results in the engaged man turning into a ’roided-up monster following a sudden allergic reaction, forcing his groomsmen to frantically try to stab him with an EpiPen to calm him down. And when physical comedy fails, crude humor rears its head, leading someone to shove their arm into an elephant’s rectum, or Farva placing an ice-cold beer on his perineum to treat his “Indian burn” (don’t ask).
Super Troopers 3 could have been an amusing experience, but its scattergun approach to comedy offers little in the way of laughs, and it completely squanders a potentially poignant premise involving these men finally reaching middle age. At this point in review, it might be germane to state that if you hold Super Troopers near and dear to your heart, you might want to steer clear of Super Troopers 3, lest it taint your appreciation of the original. But if this writer were to make another observation, it’s that there was another audience member who attended the same screening and had nothing short of a fabulous time, proudly guffawing at every punchline and every iteration of “meow” inserted into lines of dialogue. If you’ve stuck by Broken Lizard all these years, then Super Troopers 3 arguably offers more of the same, and perhaps diminishing returns are for the weaker of spirit. Sometimes, people just want the comfort of checking in with some familiar faces.
DIRECTOR: Jay Chandrasekhar; CAST: Kevin Heffernan, Jay Chandrasekhar, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske; DISTRIBUTOR: Searchlight Pictures; IN THEATERS: August 7; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 44 min.
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