by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Paul Soter, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske, Brian Cox, Marisa Coughlan, Nat Faxon, Chace Crawford, Hannah Simone
Intro:
Not Super essential, even for the die-hard fans, but you could certainly do worse.
Amongst the miniscule shelf-life for stoner comedies, or really just mainstream American comedies in general, the original Super Troopers is arguably one of the best-aged of that entire genre. It’s a rare film that has secured quotes in the collective pop consciousness to this very day (“All right meow”, “you mean Shenanigans?”, “Bearfucker!”; y’know, the classics), and it kicked off a respectable era for ol’ mates Broken Lizard over the 2000s. That it’s getting a follow-up this late into the game would normally be cause for concern, but Super Troopers 2 managed to defy the odds and damn-near match the original in terms of blue dad humour, and that was with a seventeen-year gap between drinks. Surely, this latest installment could make for a threepeat… right?
Whether it’s highway patrollers (Super Troopers), slasher horror (Club Dread), sports flicks (Beerfest), Hell’s Kitchen (The Slammin’ Salmon), or even Gothic architecture porn (the Hunchback of Notre-Dame flip Quasi), Broken Lizard are usually pretty focused on what they’re riffing on, even amidst their gonzo antics. And to a degree, that’s the case once again here, but it’s not as much on the prankster highway patrolling that gave the first two films their sticking point.
Instead, it’s a lot of really dated (like, even if this was in the first film, it’d still be long in the tooth) romcom antics, primarily to do with Thorny (Jay Chandrsekhar) trying to stop his sister (Hannah Simone) from marrying his colleague Rod (Kevin Heffernan) by any means necessary. It’s difficult to give any credit for taking their usual antics into new territory when it just ends up retreading external material that takes a lot of the anticipation out of an unfortunate amount of the jokes. That it leans into failing to point out Rod, whose whole running gag is betraying everyone else at a moment’s notice, is untrustworthy hits a weird holding pattern of expecting audiences to remember details from the other films, but only to a point.
And if it isn’t dusty sitcom run-off, or just repeating the more memorable gags from the first film all over again (something the second film already skated on thin ice by doing itself), then it’s racial humour about Thorny’s Indian family, right down to opening with an admittedly kind-of-funny Bollywood dance sequence. Nothing new for this series, as the second film was one prolonged joke about how Americans and Canadians hate each other, but when it gets to ‘force-feeding steak to a Hindu’ territory… hell, even that still would’ve been fine if it wasn’t surrounded by constant concern trolling “don’t want to look racist, do ya?” malarkey that just keeps hitting the same button on repeat. It’s not unfunny because it’s not PC; it’s unfunny because it’s mind-numbingly repetitive and predictable.
And yet… there’s still a certain charm to seeing the boys back at it again. Even through the repeated gags, the chemistry between the main actors hits the sweet spot of old friends chewing the fat that is a consistent draw for Broken Lizard flicks. A returning Brian Cox admittedly doesn’t get as much to do, to the point where even the film itself doesn’t seem sure where to put him, but then there’s Nat Faxon as his replacement for the captain of the squad. For a comedic presence still on probation after co-writing and co-directing Downhill a few years back, he manages to turn in one of his most entertaining performances since playing an evil German in Beerfest. There’s definitely some shared apprehension about coming back together for this, even admitting in-universe that recent relaxation of drug policies takes the sting out of their usual stoner antics, but thankfully that only comes through in writing, as opposed to everyone acting like they’re here under obligation. They still come across as people worth hanging out with, albeit with some protection.
Super Troopers 3 is middle-of-the-road material for the lads at Broken Lizard, but for how many years they’ve been doing this same schtick, that in and of itself is kind of admirable. There’s some clear straining against their ingrained stoner formula, and the attempts to shake it up don’t accomplish nearly as much as they likely hoped, but it still packs those WTF moments they do so well, and for every groaner, there’s a proper Dad Joke moment of begrudging ‘… okay, that was pretty funny’ admission. Not Super essential, even for the die-hard fans, but you could certainly do worse.
