Is it necessary to have seen Super Troopers (2001) or Super Troopers 2 (2018) for Super Troopers 3 to make sense?  Doubtful.  If this third installment is any indication, they are hour and a half long excuses for scatological humor dressed in Vermont State Police uniforms.  Does that make me a traitor to my generation for saying things?  I guess, but this has never been my brand of comedy.  If you were to blame it on my Faith, then you would be right, but Catholic is a label with which I have become quite comfortable.  I do maintain this blog, after all.  The nicest thing I can say is that there were many inside jokes to which I was not privy.

Though this is not intended as a joke, Super Troopers 3 begins with an Indian wedding.  I guess the humor is supposed to be that it is Trooper Rodney “Rod” Farva (Kevin Hefferman) as the groom.  He has the lowest brow of this ensemble of Neanderthals, so hence the hilarity?  Two of his comrades among the Vermont State Police are present and wondering how we got to this point, which is the subject of the rest of the film.  Two months previously, Trooper Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn (Jay Chandrasekhar) is with his partner, Trooper MacIntyre “Mac” Womac (Steve Lemme), performing as routine of a traffic stop as is possible for this gaggle of goons.  While Mac interviews the driver, Thorny is on the phone with his sister, Sarita Makundan (Hannah Simone), who is on her way for a visit.  As she is driving, a car bumps her vehicle from behind.  Before Thorny can arrive to help, she is saved by Rod, and it is love at first between the damsel and her rescuer.  A month later, the two are engaged to Thorny’s horror.  As he discusses his disapproval with Mac as they are patrolling, they are harassed by the Buchanan brothers (Chace Crawford and Jon Rudnitsky).  Who they are individually is not important, but what is more germane to the plot is that at some point in the (for me) unseen past, they had been a spot of bother for this group since the siblings had been weed smugglers.  For Mac, this makes them prime suspects for a situation that they had been briefed on earlier in the day.  According to their new chief, Captain Todd Markowski (Nat Faxon), there is a new drug coming in from Canada of which the authorities need to be aware.  Of more local concern is a new syrup conglomerate that is pushing into the area, whose delivery trucks are being vandalized.  All this would seem to fit the Buchanan brothers’ behavior, but they get away by jumping their car over a creek, a driving feet Mac has always dreamed of accomplishing.  With their suspects escaping, Thorny has to deal with the possibility of becoming Rod’s brother-in-law, which is made gross by the fact that the two lovers enjoy doing their business at his house.  Because of this, and Rod’s complete lack of appreciation for any non-white culture, Thorny resolves to stop the ceremony.  From here, it is a set of so-called comedic set pieces featuring Thorny attempting to highlight Rod’s foibles, only to have his prospective new addition to his family charming Sarita’s parents, Dr. (Iqbal Theba) and Mrs. Makundan (Sakina Jaffrey).  The worst comes during Rod’s bachelor party, which takes place at a private room in a steak house.  Being Hindu, Dr. Makundan does not eat beef, something certain religious orders in Catholicism do, I might add.  Instead, Rod tackles Dr. Makundan and forces some of the flesh into the mouth of his future father-in-law.  Instead of being outraged, Dr. Makundan takes it as a sign that he needs to loosen up his stance just this once.  This then leads to him having sex with the strippers that Thorny intends to catch Rod with, only to find dad with them.  The final insult comes when the whole mess is blamed on Thorny, and Sarita forbids him from coming to the wedding.  Making his way back after the debacle, Mac encounters the troop’s new electric squad car and thinks it might be able to clear the creek.  Instead, its safety features will not allow him to make the attempt.  Angered, he walks away and notices a lit-up barn in the middle of the woods.  Creeping up to it, he sees the Buchanan brothers and their sister, Betty (Lisa Gilroy), using the stolen syrup from before to produce the aforementioned drug.  So, yeah, that whole plot point finally returns.  Mac is about to make his move when he is found by Trooper Coy Burns (Andrew Dismukes), the newest addition to the Vermont State Police.  Instead, Coy turns out to be a part of the drug operation and helps capture Mac.  Their move is to freeze him in a vat of syrup, but he is saved by the electric car.  Meanwhile, Thorny is spending the day of the ceremony at the precinct when he logs on to the computer and finds footage that shows Rod had been the one to ram Sarita’s car.  Thinking this will be what finally puts an end to the marriage, he goes to where it is happening only to have Rod cut in and finally admit the truth.  Before anything else can happen, though, the partially unfroze Mac arrives and is able to alert the others to the Buchanan brothers, who own the property where the ceremony is being held.  The drugs are eventually found in an elephant, and I will spare you those details.  When the dust finally settles, Sarita still chooses Rod, and Thorny is forced to officiate their wedding, and a few others.

It is not worth mentioning who those other weddings are at the end of Super Troopers 3 as they are inconsequential to the main plot.  One of them does involve a car, and I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.  There is little I can take away from this movie, and as I discussed in the introduction, this could be because I did not see the previous two.  The theater in which I saw it had a couple other people in it other than myself, and they chuckled a few times.  Maybe they were more familiar with this cast of characters?  I suppose this is somewhat similar to when a non-Catholic comes to one of our Masses and they do not know the responses, or when to kneel, sit, or stand.  In other words, I am uninitiated when it comes to Super Trooper lore.  That is where the similarities begin and end.  For starters, obviously, a Catholic service is intended to save souls, whereas this does little for your eternal salvation.  That concept can be extended into their effects.  Going to Mass can do nothing but good for the attendee, even for those who are not in full Communion.  Watching a movie like this and not getting the humor does what for me?  I know there are two other films, but unlike my soul hungering for God, I have no desire to see the earlier iterations.

Based on Super Troopers 3, it is going to be difficult for me to make more specific Catholic observations, but I will do my best.  The one place to go would be in looking at Thorny’s desire to stop Sarita from marrying Rod.  I cannot blame Thorny.  Rod consistently behaves boorishly, which would be beyond crass in any other setting than a comedy such as this one.  He is still crass to me, but we have established why my opinion on such matters is complicated given that I am a Super Troopers neophyte.  What Thorny concludes by the end is that he cannot control the way Rod and Sarita feel about one another.  God is love, and since they genuinely seem to feel that way about each other, standing in its way would be contending with the Almighty.  Please do not mistake that for a relativistic approach to romance, as in all love is acceptable.  Thorny acts the way he does throughout most of the movie only because this is a comedy.  It is good for family and friends to express concerns to one other, but to do so by speaking the truth in love, which is also Christ-like.  If you do so and they proceed to make what you perceive to be the wrong decision, what more can you do?  Indeed, further action might be sinful as well.  The best we can do for anyone is pray for them, hope for their best, and be there for them when we are needed.

The last thing that is needed is for you to see Super Troopers 3.  There is next to zero redeeming value in it, although I doubt there is anything I could say to fans of the franchise to dissuade them.  Then again, this is me doing my best to help you make good cinematic choices.