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 high. The little indie comedy didn’t set the box office on fire, but managed a successful run on DVD. Following the 2018 sequel, Disney purchased Fox Searchlight, leaving many to wonder how Super Troopers would survive the merger. But here we are, three films deep into Super Troopers lore. The cast has aged and greyed in the ‘stache, but visiting them again is like getting together with old friends. Well, friends that got away with an R-rating despite being owned by the House of Mouse.
There are typically two paths that comedy sequels take. One, recycle the plot of the first film and make callbacks. Two, deviate from the formula, and risk alienating the original audience. Super Troopers 2 largely replaced the local police rivalry by making Canadian Mounties the antagonists, but there was a smattering of commentary regarding the U.S. losing its standing internationally. There were also scenes of Guy LeFranc (Rob Lowe) using a man’s reproductive organs as a speed bag, so let’s not get too high-brow.
While the series hasn’t deviated much from the whole cops-tracking-down-drug-smugglers plot, the inciting point for this film comes from an unlikely romance. Somehow, Farva (Kevin Heffernan) wooed Thorny’s (Jay Chandrasekhar) sister, Sarita (Hannah Simone), and things have escalated quickly. Wedding bells are in the near future, and everything is spiralling into a giant production, with Farva as the ringleader.
Thorny doesn’t even like the idea of sharing a car with Farva, so the prospect of calling him family is unbearable. Why anyone would marry Farva is beyond me, but he did save Sarita from a burning vehicle. But Farva keeps surprising Rabbit (Eric Stolhanske), Mac (Steve Lemme), Foster (Paul Soter), and Thorny with his displays of sophistication and interactions with the parents Ramathorn (Sakina Jaffrey and Iqbal Theba). Left with no alternative, Thorny will have to sabotage the wedding himself.
But Farva and Sarita’s upcoming nuptials aren’t the only change. With Captain O’Hagan’s (Brian Cox) retirement, newly appointed Captain Markowski (Nat Faxon) has his hands full keeping the old guard on task. If breaking up that pending union weren’t enough, the gang needs to crack down on another drug ring. An authority figure like Brian Cox is a great straight man for the cast to bounce off of; as much as I like Nat Faxon, his presence here feels redundant. Newcomers Andrew Dismukes and Faxon hold their own, but their inclusion feels unnecessary. The practice of introducing a new generation of characters works best for big franchises that need new blood—Star Wars, Scream, Jumanji—something that Super Troopers decidedly isn’t.
Super Troopers 3 is a hang movie, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone. The draw is the cast and how they escalate low-stakes events as a Vermont Highway Patrol into laugh-out-loud moments. The pacing is still focused. For every clunker of a joke that doesn’t work, the team quickly moves on to another bit. Yet there isn’t much plot in Super Troopers 3, so the appeal is watching Farva get attacked by a snake while Foster lectures him on the semantics of poisonous versus venomous.
The Broken Lizard troupe is stuck in a weird place. I love Club Dread—especially Bill Paxton’s performance as a wacked-out Jimmy Buffett that owns a theme park—but that film and Broken Lizard’s other efforts haven’t quite caught on with the public. Returns on Super Troopers are diminishing, but audiences don’t show up for their other efforts, which means they keep going back to their greatest success. Given how risk-averse studios are, they rely on franchises’ appeal to moviegoers. Super Troopers 3, like Scream 6, has a target audience and a projectable box office return. It doesn’t matter if critics don’t love it. The built-in audience will carry it.
A heartfelt send-off to Super Troopers feels right. I’ll always defend a comedy that sits and luxuriates with its cast just trying to make each other laugh. But the second sequel makes things difficult by placing Farva as a major part of the film. Don’t get me wrong, I like Heffernan, but Farva isn’t a lead. Even if it is refreshing to see a different side of him. Other comedy series like The Hangover didn’t feature any character growth to keep the premise from going stale. But the majority of Super Troopers films feature Farva as an insufferable ass; extra focus on him is not necessarily welcome.
But there’s a heart there that wasn’t present before. Foster’s courtship with Ursula (Marisa Coughlan) aside, the films haven’t had a romantic draw. Maybe they’ve gotten soft in their old age. Thorny, Rabbit, Foster, Mac, and Farva are now in their 50s. The new captain is their age. Maturity has never been a priority for the boys, but, hey, old dogs can learn new tricks.
