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Parents' Guide to

Super Troopers

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Sex and drug jokes abound in lowbrow comedy.

Movie R 2002 100 minutes
Super Troopers Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 14+

Based on 4 parent reviews

Movieman456
Movieman456 Parent of 10-year-old
February 5, 2020
age 11+
Molotovs
Molotovs Adult
July 1, 2011
age 18+

Laughing at the Vulgarity.

I personally love this movie to death! I saw it when I was sixteen, and it was one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen at that point. It's really important to see the ridiculousness of it. Meow, there are certain things you can't take seriously, and it should be common sense that the cops don't act like this. As long as you teach your children the value of common sense, it shouldn't be a problem. Separate reality from fantasy. It takes an interesting sense of humor, but if you're Mormon, I don't really recommend it.
See all 4 parent reviews

What's the Story?

SUPER TROOPERS feels like the kind of movie five college buddies who didn't want to go to law school would dream up after a week-long marathon of smoking dope and watching John Landis movies. In fact, that's pretty much how it came about. Five recent Colgate graduates who created a comedy group called Broken Lizard wrote and star in it and one of them directed it. The result is a sort of Animal House crossed with Cheech and Chong with a touch of the '70s Erik Estrada television show CHiPs. It's a slob comedy story of the rivalry between a group of Vermont highway patrolmen and the local police. It escalates from taunts and practical jokes to a struggle over turf and then to a struggle for survival. The members of Broken Lizard play the troopers, whose idea of "cheeky" hijinks includes making bets about how many times one of them can use the word "meow" while giving a motorist a speeding ticket, or donning a hippie wig and racing the other troupers to the Canadian border. In classic college fashion, drugs, alcohol, humiliation, and sex provide most of the subjects for humor.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (4 ):
Kids say (12 ):

This is in the middle range for bad-taste comedies, in terms of both bad taste and comedy. There are a lot of gross jokes that are cheerfully politically incorrect but not as offensive as some of what is out there. They are not as stupid as some of what we've seen in recent movies, but they are not terrifically funny, either. Super Troopers falls somewhere between American Pie and Tom Green.

No one in Broken Lizard has what anyone might deem star quality -- in those uniforms, they look more like they are auditioning for a local franchise for the Village People than like anyone who might know how to hold a radar gun on a speeding 18-wheeler. But director Jay Chandrasekhar and one or two of the others clearly have fun on screen and it occasionally reaches the audience.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the humor in Super Troopers. Is it funny to see authority figures behaving like total fools? Why or why not?

  • What other movies can you think of that make fun of authority figures?

  • Were there any moments when the humor seemed too extreme? If so, which moments, and why?

Movie Details

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