Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures Jay Chandrasekhar, Paul Soter and Steve Lemme star in the new comedy "Super Troopers." A sneak preview begins tonight at 7 in the Social Sciences building, Room 100. Party with the stars of the movie afterward at Dirtbags, at 9:30 p.m.

Actors hope to shine like the sun at tonight's screening, today's visit

The cast of a new film is visiting UA today, hoping to arrest the attention of students and staff.

Fox Searchlight Pictures' "Super Troopers" premieres tonight in Room 100 of Social Sciences at 5. The actors, members of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, are coming to the University of Arizona Mall today at noon as part of a promotional tour before the film opens.

The idea of taking to the road was spawned by a college tour the troupe did in 1996 for its first movie, "Puddle Cruiser," which won best film at the Hampton film festival.

This particular leg of the tour is a homecoming of sorts for UA alumnus producer Richard Perello, who graduated in 1989 from the School of Finance and Economics.

"I'm very excited to be coming back to a place where I spent such a big chunk of my life," Perello said. "It's a great feeling to come here again. I haven't been back since I graduated. This gives me the opportunity to showcase the work I've been doing since college to the people who helped me through college."

After attending UA, Perello worked on Wall Street, producing films on the side with alumna Jennifer Meyer.

Together, they produced a short film bought by "Saturday Night Live." The film led to other shorts and eventually landed him a full-time job as a producer for Broken Lizard.

"A member of Broken Lizard was temping at the place where I was working," Perello said. "He overheard me talking on the phone about producing films, I overheard him talking about making films, and it moved on from there."

Soon after joining the group, Perello left the world of finance to produce full time. He now owns Cataland Films, a production company based in New York.

"Super Troopers," which opens Feb. 15, is about five Vermont state troopers who wreak havoc on the highways. Overenthusiastic and under-stimulated, they function as fraternity brothers in uniform with mustaches and guns. They pull pranks on the great American highway, turning the arrest into an art form as their imaginations and libidos run wild.

"The film plays really well to college audiences," Perello said. "The U of A is a great place for this kind of thing. I remember going to film screenings when I was a student, and they were always so much fun. Hopefully, this will have the same of feeling."

Paul Soter, one of the writers and performers in the five-man comedy team, also said he believes the film will appeal to college students.

"It's raucous and rowdy, and at the same time, it has a kind of smart sensibility," Soter said. "College students are smart enough to not want to be hit with something completely dumb."

The college appeal might have something to do with the fact that the group has been performing together since college.

"We might have a kind of retarded maturity," Soter said, commenting on the effects of working with a group of people carried on from college. "We're still living in the same sort of existence as we did on college. At the same time, we've been out of school for 10 years - I'd like to think that we've grown up a little."

Most of the film was inspired either by things that happened to the group in college or "wouldn't it be funny if ·" stories that came out of that period.

While the troupe has created other work from TV pilots to short and feature-length films, "Troopers" is the first film by the ensemble to be picked up by a major distributor.

"It's unbelievably exciting," Soter said. "We're beginning to see trailers before movies and posters up in theaters. Soon, ads will start showing up on TV. We're finally letting ourselves start to feel that it's going to happen."

The screening will give students an early look at a movie that, the group hopes, will be big.

"So far, audiences have just loved it," Soter said. "Over time, we've turned our five voices into one. We've gotten good at what we do."