If you had told me 25 years ago that Super Troopers would have a lasting legacy, let alone two sequels, I would’ve assumed you were simply out of your mind and had no idea about the industry. The original 2001 indie comedy didn’t set the box office on fire, but it built a massive cult following on home video and DVD that has delivered a long-lasting legacy including a sequel that
2018’s Super Troopers 2 wasn’t so much fan service as fan self-service. The project was kickstarted with nearly $5 million of crowdfunding after studios doubted the public appetite for a sequel, it gave the people what they wanted: a familiar rehash of broad characters and jokes, propelled by a hit of pure generational nostalgia. It wasn’t particularly good, but its very existence felt like a satisfying underdog story. Now, eight years later, and following Disney’s acquisition of Fox Searchlight, along comes Super Troopers 3. Made with far less resistance from studio brass, the new Disney-backed film carries a more routine, less victorious air of franchise maintenance about it. Yet, any lingering doubts about how the series would survive the corporate merger are quickly put to rest: the troopers have aged and greyed in the mustache, but they’ve managed to keep their hard-R rating despite now being owned by the House of Mouse.
Comedy sequels typically take one of two paths: recycle the original plot with endless callbacks (like this year’s Scary Movie requel thing), or deviate from the formula and risk alienating the fanbase. While Super Troopers 3 isn’t a noticeable step down from its predecessor, it operates in a similar space. The jokes are wildly scattershot and frequently, knowingly lame; the production remains cheap and scrappy; and the whole enterprise relies almost entirely on the evident chemistry between its core cast to hold it together. Not much has changed in the fictional town of Spurbury. The guys are pushing sixty but still refuse to grow up, spending their days joyriding in patrol cars and pranking passing motorists.
While the series hasn’t fundamentally abandoned its cop framework, the main driving force this time around stems from standard wedding-farce shenanigans. Somehow, Farva (Kevin Heffernan) has wooed Thorny’s (Jay Chandrasekhar) sister, Sarita (Hannah Simone). Wedding bells are on the horizon, and the entire event is spiraling into a chaotic production with Farva as the ringleader. Thorny can barely tolerate sharing a patrol car with Farva, so the prospect of calling him family is unbearable. He agrees to be the best man only so he can sabotage the nuptials from the inside, despite Farva repeatedly shocking the gang with unexpected displays of sophistication around Sarita’s parents (Sakina Jaffrey and Iqbal Theba). Resorting to a wedding plot awkwardly grafted onto traditional cop antics suggests a certain dearth of narrative ideas, but it does allow for some amusing culture-clash comedy with Thorny’s not-so-traditional Hindu parents.
Meanwhile, the secondary plot, the troopers’ bumbling attempts to crack a Canadian drug ring,is pretty thin. It relies on a lot of clunky business involving electric cars and maple syrup, mostly devised to keep Rabbit (Eric Stolhanske), Mac (Steve Lemme), and Foster (Paul Soter) occupied while Thorny and Farva hash things out.
The station dynamics have shifted slightly as well. Though gruff former Captain O’Hagen (Brian Cox) has officially retired, replaced by the earnestly politically correct Captain Markowski (Nat Faxon), he still hangs around the office in stubborn denial of his status. Juvenile rookie Coy (“SNL” star Andrew Dismukes) fits right in, and if it weren’t for his TikTok fixation, you’d scarcely notice the age gap. However, introducing a “next generation” of characters works best for massive universe franchises,it feels unnecessary for a low-stakes comedy like this.
At its core, Super Troopers 3 is a good time movie, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone. The appeal is watching the cast escalate mundane traffic stops into absurd, laugh-out-loud interactions. The film devises a handful of elaborate gross-out set pieces, but the most effective gags are often the most silly and disposable and really that’s why we are all here.
Super Troopers 3 feels like a heartfelt send-off for these characters. It feels earned, there is an underlying sweetness amongst the silliness that helps make this film feel like a giant warm nostalgic hug. If this is your first Super Troopers outing, you may feel a little lost and the comedy may be lost on you, for seasoned veterans of the series, it is the surprise sequel that gives us more of what us first love this series all those years ago.
Super Troopers 3 is in cinemas now.
