Super Troopers

Rating

Director

Jay Chandrasekhar

Screenplay

Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske

Length

1h 40m

Starring

Erik Stohlhanske, Jay Chandrasekhar, Steve Lemme, Kevin Heffernan, Paul Soter, Marisa Coughlan, Daniel Von Bergen, Brian Cox, Jim Gaffigan

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
Comedy finds its way to the highway patrol in this farcical look at a competition between state troopers and a local police force.

Conceived, written and starring the members of comedy troupe Broken Lizard, Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske take on the roles of highway patrol troopers who are in danger of losing their funding from the state government. A dead body found by the highway patrol and fought over with the city police leads to an embarrassing blunder that nearly seals their fate.

Chandrasekhar plays lead trooper ‘Thorny’ Ramathorn, the most responsible of the troopers. Heffernan appears as Rodney Farva, an overweight malcontent who is forced to work radio operations because of his inability to get along well with others. Lemme plays ‘Mac’ Romack, an irreverent expert in how to play around. His goofing off is by far the most entertaining, but causes some of the largest problems. Soter takes on the role of Jeff Foster, who is the secondary voice of reason and ends up being the smartest of the troopers, but not the most responsible. Stolhanske plays ‘Rabbit’ Roto, the new recruit.

Outside of the broken lizard gang, two noted actors make appearances in the film. Character actor Brian Cox plays the gang’s patrol captain John O’Hagan. He is a gruff, but ultimately loveable malcontent whose only desire is to keep his office open. The other actor, Lynda Carter, appears in a cameo role as Governor Jessman, who is in the unenviable position of having to close a patrol office.

Rounding out the cast is the local cop and highway patrol sympathizer Ursula Hanson (Marisa Coughlan). Oddly, she is the voice of reason for this rag-tag group of highway patrol officers.

Much of the film’s hijinx revolve around the troopers’ lack of concern about their jobs and overwhelming desire to goof off all day. This attitude forms the foundation for the relationship between the local police force. These two groups fight tooth and nail to control the area resorting to fisticuffs and sabotage.

Director and star Chandrasekhar doesn’t seem to be concerned that the film has no raison d’être. Instead, it is an amorphous comedic wreck with a sufficient amount of humour, but no amount of reality or necessity.

The situations are certainly interesting and fun, but without a statement to be made, Super Troopers lacks the ability to form a bond with its audience. The audience instead laughs for an hour and a half, talks about it for a couple of days and then completely forgets they ever saw it.

Review Written

October 31, 2002