Comedy troupe faces high expectations for sequel

It might be tempting to label the 17-year-old slapstick police comedy “Super Troopers” a cult classic.

But that label does an injustice to a modern touchstone of cannabis culture. Just ask the more than 50,000 fans — including many at the SF Sketchfest 2018 comedy festival over the weekend — who ponied up more than $4 million of their own money for a “Super Troopers 2,” the sequel slated to come out April 20, the date globally recognized as a stoner holiday.

The original low-budget film follows a gaggle of bored Vermont highway patrolmen who half-heartedly try to crack a mysterious pot-smuggling ring in their small town. But really they try to entertain each other with practical jokes, like how many times they can subtly slip the word “meow” in during a traffic stop. The film’s weirdo one-liners and idiosyncratic antics earned it a devoted fan base.

The film’s core cast — Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske, known collectively as the comedy troupe Broken Lizard — is back in the sequel, which boasts a significantly larger budget and higher production values. The challenge, as director Chandrasekhar explained to an SF Sketchfest crowd on Saturday, Jan. 20, was living up to the scrappy charm of the first film, which was made for just $1 million.

“The problem sequels run into is they overcook the good stuff,” he said. “They paint it with much brighter colors. I said to the guys, ‘We’re not gonna do that.’ ”

The Broken Lizard guys were in town promoting the new film during their SF Sketchfest appearance, which featured a screening of the “Super Troopers 2” trailer and hilarious, behind-thescenes anecdotes, at two soldout shows at Cobb’s Comedy Club on Saturday. Some of those in the audience during those shows helped fund the sequel through a 2015 campaign on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.com that raised $2 million in the first 26 hours.

“(We did it) in part just to prove that there was an audience — who could have also said, ‘F— you, make your own movie,’ ” Chandrasekhar said.

It was enough to persuade film distribution company Fox Searchlight to pony up the rest.

Picking up where the original left off, “Super Troopers 2” finds the squad taking over a Canadian border town that turns out to be on American soil. The new objective: Seize control from the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“People are going to be understandably afraid that we blew it, that we took this thing they love and messed it up,” he acknowledged. But Chandrasekhar made it clear the group’s writing process hasn’t changed in nearly a generation. If anything, he said, there is more improvisation, often fueled by latenight riffing and smoking cannabis.

“You’ve got to be open to the comedy voice that’s coming into your brain” when you’re high, he said.

So like the new “Star Wars” sequels, Broken Lizard chose to stick to form: “We just made another one.”

And for Super Troopers’ passionate fans, it may just be enough for right “meow.”