Joel on Film

Our journey, if the term is deserved, with the four state troopers of a fictional Vermont town began more than two decades ago with 2002’s Super Troopers, which was an amiable series of comedy sketches and random ideas strung together into the thinnest definition of a movie. To be clear, it almost worked, mainly because the comedy team of Broken Lizard—led by director Jay Chandrasekhar as its director and star—was so committed to the idea of trying to make its audience laugh. The “trying” part ultimately got the best of it, since it was a pretty even spread of hits and misses, with a few too many of the latter.

A sequel arrived in 2018 and basically confirmed the general expectations of such a follow-up, which is to say that it contained a few more misses and not too many more hits, and now, we have a third film. Super Troopers 3: Farva’s Wedding picks up with the gang as one of them prepares to be wedded, of course, and basically picks a single target as its intended joke. Yes, there’s a subplot in the title this time, and a mid-credits scene teases a fourth movie in the franchise, complete with its own subtitle, because that’s just the way of things these days.

One suspects that a movie like this one is sort of critic-proof, since the fandom of the first film, as well as the creative team behind it, has somehow survived all these years. As someone who had to do some homework in preparation for this new one, let’s say it’s simultaneously easy to see the appeal and a little harder to buy into it. Comedy is subjective, after all, so one either learns that the screenplay (credited to the comedy team but likely heavily improvised) digs into its target of Indian culture and rarely, if ever, lets up and becomes excited at that prospect or just kind of shrugs one’s shoulders.

The fact that this review has spent so much time building up a few intangible ideas probably communicates just how little there is to discuss here. The subtitle says it all: Rodney “Rod” Farva (Kevin Heffernan), the loud and obnoxious radio operator of the team, is getting married, and the marriage vows will be shared with Sarita (Hannah Simone), the Indian sister-in-law of the Indian senior trooper Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn (Chandrasekhar), who—if one hasn’t gotten the idea yet—is Indian. He plans to sabotage it by fully exposing Farva to his and Sarita’s parents (played by Iqbal Theba and Sakina Jaffrey).

That’s pretty much the entirety of the plot that matters here, although some other business comes up that gives the other characters—including Erik Stolhanske’s Robbie “Rabbit” Roto and Steve Lemme’s MacIntyre “Mac” Womack—something to do and affords the film a feature-length running time. A few jokes at the expense of the culture manage to land amid a barrage of crass humor, and since none of it is delivered with any sort of mean spirit, at least it only ends up being tiresome instead of offensive. Simone and Jaffrey and Theba are all good sports for putting up with a lot of the nonsense here, but it’s quite thin, is based upon an equally thin joke (which is that Farva and Sarita are quite aroused by each other), and features a lot of thin reasons to keep the movie going (mainly building on the sex humor between the couple by transposing it upon everyone else or, otherwise, giving us a new captain, played by Nat Faxon, who is obsessed with Indian culture).

The other business involves dual investigations into a series of vandalism against trucks carrying corn syrup, which seems to be at the middle of its own plot to replace maple syrup discreetly, and a nighttime driver who runs Sarita off the road in the opening scene. A pair of brothers (played by Chace Crawford and John Rudnitsky) appear to be at the center of that scheme, which also provides a small twist involving a double agent that doesn’t really mean anything. As for the likes of Brian Cox (as O’Hagan, now retired and more ornery than ever) and Marisa Coughlan (as the girlfriend of Paul Soter’s Carl Foster), they’re just lucky to be here in a couple of offhand appearances that were likely contractually obligated.

In the barest form, then, this is a Super Troopers movie, which will mean something to a certain portion of the audience and not all that much to those outside its fan base, who will probably still know what they’re getting. Super Troopers 3: Farva’s Wedding features a thin plot, stitched onto a clothesline made of jokes, delivered with a little less enthusiasm by a comedy troupe that all seem to be slightly confused why they’re still doing this 25 years later.

Rating: *½ (out of ****)