My quick rating – 6.5/10. It’s rare for me to say that all three movies in a comedy series get a 7 from me. At least the Super Troopers franchise is consistent. Well…mostly. Let’s call this one a 6.5 and pretend I’m not ruining my own system. Super Troopers 3 kicks things off with an upbeat Bollywood-style dance number featuring Farva (Kevin Heffernan), because this is where we are now.
After a bunch of understandably confused onlookers ask, “How did we end up here?”, the movie jumps back two months to explain exactly how things got this ridiculous. They have to give us some comedic antics to explain how Thorny’s (Jay Chandrasekhar) sister Sarita (Hannah Simone) ended up engaged to Farva.
Thorny is understandably less than thrilled about this development and decides that breaking up the happy couple is a perfectly reasonable use of police resources. Meanwhile, the gang also has to deal with a new drug ring, because apparently ruining your sister’s engagement isn’t enough to keep a Vermont highway patrol busy.
The movie has no shortage of familiar faces and returning characters. Brian Cox is back as the captain, and his scenes remain some of the funniest parts of the movie. I see the new rookie recruit is Coy (Andrew Dismukes) from Saturday Night Live. And when I heard the voice of the car, I immediately recognized it. Will Sasso from MADtv.
The pacing is good, and there are enough ridiculous moments to keep things moving. If you’re already a fan of Broken Lizard and just want to hang out with these idiots again, there’s plenty here to enjoy. But the crime storyline, character arcs, and increasingly over-the-top comedy don’t always balance as well as they did. Some jokes land perfectly. Others feel like the movie is throwing things at the wall because, well, Super Troopers.
You definitely need to enjoy this particular brand of stupidity to get much out of it. Thankfully, I do.
The biggest problem is that this is probably the weakest of the three. If we’re going to insist on comparing them, which we probably are. The stupidity is still charming, and there’s a deep well of jokes here, but the third installment feels like it’s missing some of the magic that made the earlier movies work so well.
And seeing the entire core cast back together roughly 25 years after the original is pretty damn impressive. (Damn, I am old.) If they come back for another one, though, I think they need to shake things up a little
Then again, I think we know that joke already. Potfest still hasn’t happened.
Maybe Super Troopers 4: The Search for O’Hagan’s Gold actually will. Who knows?
