SUPER TROOPERS

Guest Review By: Josh Walker on 4.30.2010

The Movie Itself:
The police comedy has been done so many times before, I can’t help but wonder how many more can be worth the time to view. Well rest assured, the boys from Broken Lizard will not let you down with this one. Released back in 2002, this is a quite hilarious take on the genre. While the story-line is not deep or complex by any means, this film is packed with laughs throughout most of the movie. Some of the pranks they perform on civilians they pull over are alone worth the view to me. I still to this day make references to some jokes from the film. It was a constant subject in my class in the police academy of course.

The story follows five officers from the State Highway Patrol in Spurbury, Vermont. Every one of which is as big of a goofball as the next. None of them take their job seriously or really do their job properly for that matter. This in turn causes less and less revenue coming in and therefore budget cuts may have to be made from local law enforcement. A murder linked to drug trafficking is discovered in their jurisdiction and could be their ticket to put the Patrol back in the spotlight, but the local Police Department wants to steal the glory from the Patrol and shut them down. The team works together to solve the problem at hand all while hilarious scenarios keep coming about. As I said, the story is not very original or moving and the characters are not deep or significant for the most part. With all this I still think Super Troopers works very well. I just approached it not expecting anything but a mindless comedy and it delivers.
Rating: 6/10

The Presentation:
Super Troopers features a 1080p MPEG-4/AVC codec with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio which is a nice step up from the DVD I owned. By no means is this a visual feast or a top tier release in terms of visual quality, but I believe it does the film justice. There are some issues with the darker scenes as I was distracted a couple times by the grain, but nothing horrific. The overall color of the disc was not as crisp as a great deal of newer releases and appeared soft at times, but again this is not a blockbuster of a file.

The film contains a lossless English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which serves its purpose without really impressing me. The audio is mostly front heavy and lacks much surround presence or LFE interaction. Just as I said with the picture quality, I couldn’t expect too much more than we received here, which was nothing superb but I am still happy with it.
Rating: 6/10

The Extras:
Here are the extras for Super Troopers.

• Audio Commentaries – There are actually 2 different versions of commentary here by the crew. I can’t say either was that great or humorous.
• “Featurette” (SD, 6 minutes) – The basic “making of” the film. Nothing special and is featured in SD none the less.
• “Road Trip News Wrap” (SD, 2 minutes) – This appears to be a marketing strategy to spread the word on the movie’s original release. The guys go out in character promoting the film.
• Outtakes and Extended Scenes (SD, 41 minutes) – A whole slew of scenes not included in the movie. Some were alright, others seemed like a waste and had good reason to be deleted. I grew tired watching them all since there are so many. Still more is better than not enough with any release.
• Theatrical Trailers (SD) – 2 of the theatrical trailers for Super Troopers.
• Fox on Blu-ray (HD) – Standard trailers for Juno, Me, Myself & Irene, and There’s Something About Mary.
• “Stupor Troopers: The Drinking Game” - Via BD-Live.
• Picture-in-Picture Commentary - Via BD-Live.

Overall:
I hate to make excuses for the quality if the audio and video, but it satisfies me as a fan of this comedy. I can’t say I expected an extraordinary release in terms of presentation so it actually almost caught me by surprise with the quality here. If you are a fan of this film and are looking to upgrade your DVD or buy it for the first time, I would say go for it.
Rating: 6/10