The Movie I Watched Last Night LXVIII

Super Troopers
Well, it took me three sittings, but I finally made it through Super Troopers last night. Recommended to me by a friend in Austin, I wanted to make sure I paid attention to the whole thing, and I found that to be one of the biggest challenges I've faced in a long time. This movie is awful. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. Yet it does have its charm and moments of comedic clarity. The story of a Vermont state highway patrol office trying to combat being closed because of budget cuts -- and their rivalry with the local police department -- Super Troopers is in the end a delightfully anticlimactic "save the business" kind of movie. Save the school, save the golf course, why not save the police department? Outside of a couple of intertwining subplots -- including the Romeo and Juliet-like romance between two members of the rival departments and a catalytic drug smuggling conspiracy ("It's Afghanistanimation!") -- the movie is a string of loosely linked vignettes spotlighting arrests and their aftermath, pranks inside and between the two departments, and puerile humor. It's a silly film and totally a throw away. Watch this only if you have nothing else -- or better -- to do. And I mean nothing. Because I watched it three times so you don't have to.