"Altered State Police"

Super Troopers (2001): 2/10

Poster art from impawards.com
If there’s ever a movie that people say isn’t as bad as it looks or what critics say, don’t agree with them. That’s what I did with Super Troopers. It’s a misguided non tour-de-farce that has no idea where it’s going. In fact, to make the obligatory pun, this movie could be called Super Poopers, since that’s what this movie basically is and what most of the “jokes” consist of.

The slim-to-none plot is about highway patrolmen who like to mess with the people they pull over. However, the “evil” state police men are going to take over their highway (gasp!) so they must save it.

The bad guys were all too clear-cut, not leaving any mystery or suspense for us to follow. Of course, my DVD player did go on the fritz twice, but I don’t think I missed anything. In fact, I’m glad it did. There’s so many things wrong, what should I begin with?

First, I’ll go with the non-jokes. In the beginning I may have chuckled around twice, but soon fell through a giant hole. There are constant drug and sex jokes that aren’t funny. The slapstick wasn’t even funny; I usually fall for that. It all seemed a bit too rushed and tried to throw in a meaningless plot instead of making this an “SNL-movie”. Personally, I think an idea like this would work better in variety show cases. The “one-joke” premise got wasted early on. Plus, the movie seemed to run out of steam in the end.

I also thought that all of the swearing was added in to try to attract a larger audience; it certainly wasn’t necessary and definitely seemed not to fit in. Too many characters were thrown in, just like all of the unoriginal movies like this. How are we supposed to keep them straight if we don’t know anything about them?

I didn’t buy any of the chemistry between the troopers and the police; in fact, it was laughingly bad. Hey, just like the rest of the movie!

Rated R for language, sexual content and drug use.

Review Date: January 18, 2003