A Vermont highway patrol officer’s brilliant sister is run off the road and then falls in love with her exceedingly stupid rescuer. The trooper and his crew must find a way to stop the wedding and, you know, solve local crimes and stuff. Profanity, nudity, running sex gags, foolish slapstick and general grossness abounds.
Captain O’Hagan’s chucklehead squad of Vermont State Troopers have gone through a lot of changes. For one, the sharp-tongued captain has retired from duty. He still hangs around the station most days to growl about one thing or another and eat a toaster pastry, but he has officially been replaced by the mild-mannered Todd Markowski.
Much to the trooper crew’s chagrin, one of Captain Markowski’s initiatives is the introduction of a new electric vehicle cruiser. Oh, and this EV is a Canadian product with a Canadian AI voice control, don’tcha know. Yeah, that earns him big points with the rest of the squad.
Oh, and there’s a new illicit drug on the streets that the officers must keep an eye out for called Canadian Crystal. Those blankity-blank Canadians sure know how to ruin a good Vermont trooper’s day.
However, all those new across-the-border irritations are the least of trooper Thorny’s concerns.
You see, Thorny’s sister, Sarita, has come all the way from India to speak at a local university. (That’s how brilliant of a geneticist she is.) But then, after being mysteriously run off the road, Sarita falls head over heels for her rescuer: the boorish dunderhead, Farva.
Trooper Farva happens to be the stupidest and most bothersome thorn in your side that Thorny has ever had to deal with. How Thorny’s sister fell in love with that is inexplicable. And Thorny will not allow this boil on humanity’s backside to become his brother-in-law!
Problem is, Thorny can’t seem to pound the truth of things into Sarita’s usually brilliant head. The wedding is fast approaching. The noisy sex rings clear through the walls of his house. And Thorny is going quite crazy. He must come up with a plan.
Oh, and if he can solve some crimes and deal with those Canadian things, too, that’d be great.
Love is in the air, and several couples end up getting married.
Just before her accident, Sarita says that tarot cards predicted she would soon meet the man of her dreams. An Indian wedding ceremony features a large statue of the Hindu elephant-headed god, Ganesha. Sarita and Thorny’s father declares that, as a faithful Hindu, he can’t eat beef. After being injected with a drug, someone reports, “I saw God. He was an albino!”
Sarita pulls Farva into Thorny’s house and the two engage in loud sexual activities offscreen. Then Farva walks out of the bedroom dressed in a too-tight T-shirt, spouting about their interactions. He bends over, exposing his naked backside, then puts a cold can of beer on his privates (which are kept from the camera’s eye).
During a bachelor party, two strippers are brought in dressed in barely-there lingerie that exposes their backsides. They go off into another room with a man to have sex together. Someone bursts into the room to catch the three people, all naked and writhing together. (Key areas are quickly covered by arms or shielded from the camera’s eye. However, we do catch a glimpse of a woman’s breast from the side and see their mostly exposed backsides once again.)
Farva is bitten on the neck by a viper, and Sarita’s mother proceeds to suck the venom out of his neck. This activity visibly arouses Farva and the other men in the room (which the camera focuses on), who move to hide their clothed groins.
After her husband cheats on her, a woman claims that she’s going to have “revenge sex.” She apparently does so, handing a man a copy of the Kama Sutra while making several comments about her own sexual prowess. A naked couple sits in two separate tubs, sipping martinis and talking about having sex. A man watches another man urinate. A guy humps sexually against a car. Sarita kisses two different men.
There are many, many visual and verbal gags about oral sex, genital size and shape, erectile disfunction and various sexual habits and activities throughout the film.
There is an ongoing string of people getting punched and thumped around in this pic, generally for comedic effect.
Sarita’s car gets hit from behind by another vehicle. She then swerves off the road and crashes into a tree, flipping the vehicle on its side. Gas leaks out of the car’s tank, and it explodes. (Though Sarita is unharmed.)
Several high-speed car maneuvers and dangerous vehicle chases take place in the film. Vehicles leap over a flowing creek, smash into buildings and send groups of people scattering for safety. A package of C-4 explosives detonates and spatters a crowd with maple syrup.
Someone passes out after consuming alcohol and drugs and slams his head on a table. A woman falls and snaps a man’s leg with her body weight. Later, that man’s leg, now in a cast, is broken a second time by a stumbling person.
The troopers have a shoot-out with drug dealers. People are held at gunpoint. A man gets impaled by a thrown knife. A drug-runner gets extremely hot pepper juice rubbed in her eyes. We see her later with red and watery eyes.
There are more than 60 f-words and 20 s-words spattering the movie dialogue, joined by four or five uses each of the words “a–,” “b–ch,” “h—” and “d–n.” God’s name and Jesus’ name are both misused more than a dozen times total (God’s name being blended with “d–n” in four of those instances). Jokes are made about male and female genitals. People display offensive hand gestures.
We hear of a new form of cocaine called Canadian Crystal. And the troopers later uncover a large stash of the drug. One family is said to have been former marijuana sellers before going straight.
The troopers guzzle beer and alcohol on several occasions. During Farva’s bachelor party, all the invited men drink heavily and get staggeringly drunk. During that party, Captain Markowski accidentally eats four low-dose mushroom-laced chocolates, and it results in reality-blurring visions.
Men stab a guy with multiple EpiPens after he has an allergic reaction. Later, more EpiPens are pulled out and a variety of people are hit with them in the chest and neck. Men belch loudly (and repeatedly) after guzzling beer.
There are a number of jibes regarding race and ethnicity throughout the film. After one such joke, Sarita’s mother declares, “We do like racial humor.” A heavily inebriated individual “scream-vomits” repeatedly into a bucket. A vegetarian who abstains for religious reasons is forced to eat beef. A man inserts his entire arm up the backside of an elephant.
With all the layers of writers, script advisers, producers, executives and quality control personnel swirling around a typical multi-million dollar movie production, you would think that somebody would be able to tell if something is funny or not. But that ain’t necessarily so.
Super Troopers 3 was even created by an honest-to-goodness, long-running comedy troupe (Broken Lizard) that has gained cult-level status in the past and cranked out many a movie. But apparently, they don’t have a clue what’ll make an audience chuckle either.
This mirthless mob throws every possible bit of police-parody nonsense they could come up with at the screen: crude farce, sticky slapstick, burlesque parody, scores of gross sexual gags, bared flabby shanks, an old guy with naked strippers, a dude jamming his arm up an elephant’s nether regions.
This crass crew weaves together incongruent plotlines, racial and ethnic jabs, vulgar gags and old, recycled jokes. Hey, they even deliver a maple syrup homage to Star Wars (which I’m sure Disney has already sent “please desist” letters about). And still this movie’s laugh meter barely jiggles.
Super Troopers 3 is the exceedingly profane equivalent of that obnoxious kid who tries to grab attention in class with a rude toot but accidently delivers more than he planned on. Sure, someone might chortle, but most just wince and hold their noses. And you sure wouldn’t want to pay money for the experience.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
