Super Troopers

Submission 7,346

About

Super Troopers is a 2001 comedy film about a team of five Vermont state troopers who patrol near the Canadian border of the state. In March of 2015, an Indiegogo campaign was launched to crowdfund a sequel for the film.

History

On January 19th, 2001, Super Troopers was released, in which a team of prankster state troopers attempt to solve a murder and uncover a drug-smuggling ring. The film stars the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, consisting of members Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske.

Online Presence

On February 1st, 2012, YouTuber JustinSantiago99 uploaded a clip of the opening scene from the film, which gathered upwards of 2.7 million views and 2,000 comments in the first three years. On April 11th, a Facebook^[6] page titled "Super Troopers" was launched, garnering more than 1.3 million likes in the following three years.

Sequel Crowdfunding Campaign

On March 24th, 2015, the Broken Lizard group created an Indiegogo^[1] page with a goal of $2 million to crowdfund the sequel Super Troopers 2. That day, the promotional video for the campaign was submitted to the /r/videos^[7] subreddit, where it gained over 5,100 votes (92% upvoted) and 1,900 comments in the first 48 hours. In 24 hours, the campaign reached its goal.^[2] As of March 2015, the project is #37 on the Wikipedia "list of highest funded crowdfunding projects"^[3] with more than $2.8 million received.

Reception

As of March 2015, the film has a score of 35% on Rotten Tomatoes^[4] and a score of 48 on Metacritic.^[5]

"Meow" Game

During the film, a trooper performs a prank in which he replaces the word "now" with "meow" when interacting with a detained driver (shown below, left). Since the film's release, the prank has been performed by several professional sports players during interviews. On September 28th, 2012, the Atlanta Falcons football player Thomas DeCoud played the "meow" game during an interview on the television show SportsCenter (shown below, right).

On November 28th, 2014, YouTuber gokwingsogo uploaded a video of hockey player Ray Kaunisto saying the word "meow" seven times during an intermission interview (shown below, left). In four months, the video gathered upwards of 1.1 million views and 170 comments. On March 11th, 2015, YouTuber masn National uploaded a video of baseball pitcher Gio Gonzalez fitting the word "meow" into an interview 11 times (shown below, right).