{"id":804002,"date":"2026-08-05T23:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/804002\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:30:08","slug":"super-troopers-3-review-frat-comedy-graduates-to-domestic-farce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/804002\/","title":{"rendered":"Super Troopers 3 review: Frat comedy graduates to domestic farce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traditionally, American frat-coded comedies of antics inspire a single less-successful sequel, if that, before moving to TV, either creatively (via in-name-only brand extensions) or spiritually (via the old ways of \u201980s comedy preservation: endless superstation airings). But Broken Lizard<\/a>, the comic troupe best known for the 2002 hit Super Troopers, has never been a fully traditional practitioner of the form. In some ways, the group is more genuinely fraternity-minded than, say, the cast and crew of Caddyshack: They literally met as frat boys at Colgate University, several of their films involve elaborate pranks, and there\u2019s a certain, if not interchangeability, let\u2019s say egalitarian sensibility to their group chemistry. (No Bill Murray or Chevy Chase-style soloist breakouts here, in other words.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet the aggro unpleasantness of an uber-fratty comedy like The Hangover\u2014the rare comedy blockbuster big enough to inspire a trilogy, albeit not a particularly well-regarded one\u2014doesn\u2019t have much place in their movies, whether good, bad, or Beerfest (a movie beyond good or evil). These projects include plenty of vulgar tangents, slapstick misadventures, and, yes, those goofy pranks; men also tend to outnumber women around five to one. But the troupe\u2019s movies have such a disarming affability, and touch just enough cleverness, that in 2026, Broken Lizard can more or less get away with making Super Troopers 3, even (or especially) if their more casual fans have forgotten that Super Troopers 2 existed.<\/p>\n

The third installment in this epic series about Vermont state troopers killing time by razzing each other and creating oddball challenges (the ur-text of their existence: slip the word \u201cmeow\u201d into as many civilian interactions as possible without ever admitting it) does finally admit to a possible hierarchy within the Broken Lizard ranks, by virtue of its surprisingly irresistible plot hook pairing its two most immediately distinctive members. Farva (Kevin Heffernan<\/a>), the most cheerfully boorish of the five now-veteran troopers, is poised to marry Sarita (Hannah Simone), the sister of Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar<\/a>), the nominal ringleader (though never actual captain) of the group whose status echoes Chandrasekhar\u2019s real-life role as their default director.<\/p>\n

To some degree or another, the boys have grown to accept Farva\u2019s outsized, short-fused antics over the years. But the prospect of Farva becoming Thorny\u2019s brother-in-law, all because he rescued his sister from a particularly bad car accident, vexes him to no end. In a perversely endearing touch, it seems to fill Farva with absolute glee. Thorny then endeavors to sabotage their relationship, Super Troopers 3 splitting the difference between classic farce and its mustier equivalent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are some other plot threads involving Foster (Paul Soter) splitting from his longtime girlfriend Ursula (Marisa Coughlan), Mac (Steve Lemme) yearning to do right by his teenage self by pulling off a ridiculous car jump, and Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske) feeling jealousy over the fact that his rookie status has finally been usurped by a much younger colleague (Andrew Dismukes). These barely-subplots are all vaguely oriented around the anxieties of aging, but not in any particularly meaningful way. A movie actually interested in reckoning with its fiftysomething heroes and their place in the here-and-meow might start with avoiding this one\u2019s most shopworn comic situations, like (get a load of this) an accidental drug trip where a guy avoiding magic mushrooms winds up ingesting a whole bunch of them.<\/p>\n

Yet as with its predecessors, ramshackle high spirits carry Super Troopers 3 through its less inspired patches, and toward the group\u2019s more charming comic tastes. The group continues to have some fun with their Vermont setting, even if the movie was actually shot in Massachusetts and New York; the obligatory crime plot involves local disdain for \u201cBig Syrup.\u201d And for a bunch of prank-happy middle-aged dudes, they still love their weird little verbal digressions, like an ongoing debate over which syndrome (Stockholm? Munchausen by proxy?) must be responsible for Sarita\u2019s immediate attraction to Farva.<\/p>\n

The audience\u2019s attraction is more explicable; Heffernan relishes the opportunity to make the best of the worst guy at the office, throwing himself into bits like the scene where Farva stubbornly insists on endangering himself with a particular food choice at his bachelor party. Still, in the current era of puffed-up idiocy, the wholehearted commitment of a true vulgarian shouldn\u2019t count for much, so it\u2019s impressive that in this little corner of fake Vermont, isolated from any pesky real-world politics, Farva becomes downright irrepressible without sacrificing his rough edges.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a one-man solution to a common sabotage-comedy problem. Typically, the would-be saboteur\u2019s selfish myopia becomes tediously obvious early in the proceedings. Thorny\u2019s desire to stop his sister from marrying Farva, however, manages to seem relatively rational for much of the runtime, even as it revels in its own silliness. In doing so, the movie crosses over to shame other, unexpected studio comedy styles: It\u2019s not only better than any of the Hangover sequels, it beats the hell out of the two Meet The Parents follow-ups so far. Depending on the school of frat comedy, that might put the Broken Lizard boys in the running for valedictorian.<\/p>\n

Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Writers: Broken Lizard
Starring: Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Brian Cox, Andrew Dismukes, Nat Faxon
Release Date: August 7, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traditionally, American frat-coded comedies of antics inspire a single less-successful sequel, if that, before moving to TV, either…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-804002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}