By Nick Nitkowski 

I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a good long while since I last watched the previous two “Super Troopers” movies and with the third film coming out very soon, I decided to do a “Super Troopers” marathon leading up to the new installment. So, here’s a short take on my fresh new thoughts on the first two films. The first one is obviously a classic, but upon watching it again, I remember it being funnier back when I first watched it on DVD so many years ago. This time around, I didn’t find myself laughing as much. Perhaps I’ve matured too much since then. The second film, in my personal opinion, I found to be much funnier. Surprisingly, this one managed to make me laugh even after being absent from my mind for so long. Which brings us to “Super Troopers 3”! The boys are finally back again! But can these Troopers still serve? Or is it far too late meow?

It’s been about eight years since “Super Troopers 2” was released and 25 years since the first “Super Troopers” movie was released. That’s a pretty wide gap between films, so I definitely needed a refresher before going into “Super Troopers 3”. In this new third installment, all the characters that you know and love are back! Thorny, Mac, Rabbit, Foster, and Farva have all returned for another outing! This time, Farva is getting married! The only problem is that he’s getting married to Thorny’s sister! Greatly displeased by this information, Thorny is determined to stop the wedding at all costs.

This third installment is pretty much what you would expect it to be. A group of guys undergoing multiple shenanigans together creates a few laughs for the fans along the way. This was a simple, mindless, fun comedy movie. Much like the first two films, I can see this third installment not getting much praise from critics but will end up satisfying the fans, and that’s the main target that this movie caters to. And while I’m not the biggest “Super Troopers” fan out there, I’d be remremiss I said that I didn’t have a few good laughs with this one.

Despite the eight-year gap between the 2 and 3, the chemistry between the characters is just as palpable as ever. As I had mentioned before, the entire original cast is back for this third outing. Even Brian Cox is back as O’Hagan. Everyone works well off each other, but the main focus is on Farva and Thorny and the friction between their two conflicting personalities, which makes for some pretty amusing laughs. Of course, the other guys have some subplots throughout the film, but it’s the interaction between Farva and Thorny that really brings the comedy, in my opinion.

The story itself is a basic one and one that we’ve seen many times before in various movies and TV shows. It’s the “I gotta stop this wedding” cliché. Do they do anything different with it? No, not really. It plays out almost exactly how you would expect it to. It’s all the jokes woven into it that make it somewhat different, and  that is where it will lose the critics, but the fans won’t care because they just want to laugh. And on that front, I believe the movie delivers.

Overall, if you’re a fan of “Super Troopers” , I think you will have a good time with “Super Troopers 3”. It knows what it is. It doesn’t try to be anything different, and  it doesn’t try to break the mold or new ground anywhere. It just does what it wants to do for the fans. Like I said before, I’m not a die-hard fan of “Super Troopers”, but I do enjoy them for the most part, and  I enjoyed this third installment for what it was. I didn’t expect anything more or anything different from it. The only thing that bothers me is that we got “Super Troopers 3” before we got “Boondock Saints 3”, but I digress. It is a mindless fun time at the movies right meow, but I’m sure it’s not gonna be knocking “Spider-Man” or “The Odyssey” off their mantles this weekend.

🌟 🌟 🌟 stars