‘Super Troopers 3’ Review: A Cult Comedy Franchise Seeks No Converts in Instantly Forgettable Third Go-Round

2018’s “Super Troopers 2” wasn’t so much fan service as fan self-service. Kickstarted with nearly $5 million of crowdfunding after studios doubted the public appetite for a tardy sequel to the 2001 indie sleeper “Super Troopers,” it gave the people what they wanted and not much else: a familiar rehash of the first film’s broad characters and jokes, with a built-in hit of generational nostalgia courtesy of nothing more than time itself. 17 years separated those films; eight years later, along comes “Super Troopers 3,” and any semblance of event status feels duly halved. “Super Troopers 2” wasn’t very good, but its very existence was a satisfying underdog story in itself; made in less time with less resistance from studio brass, the new, Disney-backed film has a more routine, less victorious air of franchise maintenance about it.

For die-hard faithfuls of this proudly lunkheaded series, that might be enough. Continuing the misadventures of its core quintet of inept, resplendently mustachioed Vermont state troopers — played, as ever, by the five individuals making up the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, who also take a collective writing credit — “Super Troopers 3” isn’t obviously a step down from their last outing. The jokes are still wildly scattershot and frequently, knowingly lame; the production is still cheap and cheerfully scrappy; the whole ragged enterprise is still reliant on the evident affection and chemistry between its players to hold it together. None of that really amounts to a persuasive reason to exist on the big screen, however: At this point, perhaps simply turning “Super Troopers” into a running sitcom, like a rural GenX “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” would be a fitting move.

Not much has changed in the fictional backwoods town of Spurbury, Vermont, and its chaotic highway patrol department: Though gruff former captain O’Hagen (Brian Cox) has officially retired, replaced by the earnestly politically correct Markowski (Nat Faxon), he still hangs around the office in stubborn denial of that fact. His erstwhile team of troopers, meanwhile, are all pushing sixty but staunchly refusing to grow up, as they spend their days joyriding in their patrol cars and pranking passing motorists. Juvenile rookie Coy (“SNL” star Andrew Dismukes) seems to fits right in, and if it weren’t for his TikTok fixation, you’d scarcely notice the age gap.

Meanwhile, the running frenemy dynamic between senior trooper Thorny (Chandrasekhar) and his coarse, obnoxious colleague Farva (Kevin Heffernan) takes more strain than usual when Farva becomes engaged to Thorny’s sister Sarita (Hannah Simone). Cue a bonanza of elaborate Indian-American wedding preparations, with the troopers eagerly if unhelpfully assisting in the festivities — save for Thorny, who agrees to be Farva’s best man only so he can sabotage the nuptials from the inside. That “Super Troopers 3” has resorted to standard wedding-farce shenanigans, somewhat awkwardly grafted onto its usual cop antics, suggests a certain dearth of ideas on the script front. It does, at least, allow for some mildly amusing culture-clash comedy centered on Thorny’s not-so-traditional Hindu parents, gamely played by Sakina Jaffrey and Iqbal Theba.

A secondary narrative involving the troopers’ bumbling attempts to crack a nefarious Canadian drug ring is pretty thin gruel, necessitating a lot of unfunny business about electric cars and maple syrup, devised to keep the other three Broken Lizard members occupied while imminent brothers-in-law Thorny and Farva hash things out. None of them really gets prime material to work with, but then there isn’t a lot of that to go around anyway. Though the film devises a handful of elaborate grossout setpieces — bottoming out, so to speak, with Thorny fisting a wedding elephant — the most immediately funny gags here are often the most benignly stupid and disposable: This critic laughed out loud at the reference to an Indian clothes shop called Turban Outfitters, but repeating the joke certainly doesn’t do much for it.

Then again, one wouldn’t have thought repeating “Super Troopers” a particularly good idea — least of all twice — but a whole quarter of a century later, here we are. “Super Troopers 2” made a solid $32 million at the box office, but it still feels a stretch to describe this second sequel as existing by popular demand: Chandrasekhar and the guys are surely just amusing themselves at this point, confident that their cult will chuckle along with them.