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Super Troopers
**1/2
Cinema Releases - November 15, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
101 minutes. Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. Written by Jay Chandrasekhar,
Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske. Starring Jay
Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske,
Brian Cox, Daniel von Bargen, Marisa Coughlan, Lynda Carter, Jimmy
Noonan.
The trailer for "Super Troopers"
was hilarious, perhaps because ads tend to rush ahead with tightened timing
and set everything to loud, energetic music. I went into the movie with high
expectations, and ended up laughing now and again, but damn, it could use
a trimming of fifteen or twenty minutes, and something to crank up the energy
level.
It's about a small gang of Vermont highway patrolman,
all with the obligatory dark glasses, some with the obligatory moustaches,
others still trying to grow moustaches. Brian Cox plays the tough Irish-American
boss, who orders his men to stop misbehaving, in order to prevent their state
funding from being cut. Jay Chandrasekhar is Thorny, who not only has a
moustache, but also possesses the closest amount of brainpower this film
offers to human intelligence. His colleagues are Farva (Kevin Heffernan),
the loud fat guy nobody likes; Mac (Steve Lemme), who likes to use his speed
gun to measure the pace of his hand while jerking off to sexy billboards;
Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske), the surprisingly adventurous rookie; and Foster
(Paul Soter), who is pursuing one of the local female cops, even though those
local sunzabitches are the sworn enemies of state patrolmen.
The story follows the rivalry with local cops,
as well as our guys' very poor attempts to stay out of trouble while their
department is up for review. We get quite a bit of funny stuff on this journey,
including one of the men pretending to have sex with a wild bear to distract
from a secret operation, Mac standing nude except for a bullet-proof cup
while his buddies fire live ammunition into his crotch, and Thorny pretending
to be stoned while pulling over a bunch of stoners. ("Do you know how fast
you were going?"; "Uh... sixty-five?"; "No, sixty-three!"; "I'm freakin'
out, man!")
There is also inventive dialogue throughout:
"Desperation is a stinky cologne," chortles the rival police chief at one
point, and even the unpopular Farva gets a couple of great lines, such as
"Licence and registration, chicken-fucker!" and "Just cleaning out the old
locker -- she stinks like ass, but I'll sure miss her... I guess you could
say that about all my girls."
But somehow "Super Troopers" is lacking in quick-fire
zinger rhythm. Chandrasekhar, Heffernan, Lemme, Soter and Stolhanske are
a comedy partnership called Broken Lizard, who wrote as well as starred,
and the background information is helpful in figuring out that this is sort
of a grass-roots effort, which might be released by Fox but was not made
with the typical studio budget. The result is a movie that doesn't exactly
look unprofessional but could use some overproducing; if the shots were more
focused and the sound design had a little more punch, this could be an amazing
film instead of just an endearing one.
Another problem, which may not have mattered much
if the film had more kick to it, is that we can never tell just how goofy
the characters are supposed to seem. One minute they'll be smoking weed in
the station house, fondling the breasts of prisoners' wives and giggling
to Afghani cartoons, or starting slapstick fights with kids at fast food
counters. Then, with even less congruity than the "Police Academy" movies,
we'll see the story take over, meaning the characters have to level-headedly
(well, sort of) pursue their individual romances or continue in their plots
against the local cops. Are the super troopers supposed to be all zany and
nutso, or are they not?
There's a distance to the film. Even when we laugh,
it's out of admiration for the jokes rather than gasping involvement in them.
Maybe there's a reason that so much of the plot revolves around marijuana
busts: This could be a movie you're supposed to watch stoned, so you'll be
unaware of the dead spots and able to have a good time by giggling at the
quirky spirit behind individual gags long after they have been sprung. E-mail
feedback will undoubtedly provide an answer to that theory.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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