The wife and I watched Beerfest on Friday night and to be honest I expecting more from the boys over at Broken Lizard. Many people know them from their first (and best if you ask me) movie Super Troopers while others may know them from their second movie Club Dread. Beerfest is a definitely an improvement over the dismal piece of crap that Club Dread was, but it’s still not on par with Super Troopers. Now that I’ve seen Broken Lizard’s third installment I have to start to wonder if Super Troopers was just “lightening in a bottle” that will never be equaled. Either way, on to the review of this particular film:
Beerfest is basically the story of four guys who spend a year training to compete in an underground beer drinking competition in Germany in order to defend their family’s honor. While that premise may sound like it would lend itself to a very funny movie, in the end it fails to deliver. The characters are great (as usual) and the way they interact is fantastic, but story itlsef seems to drag them down… robbing them of their comedic value in many ways. I’d actually have to say some of the funniest shit in the movie is done during the main DVD menu whose backdrop is the guys in character doing a press conference about their time at Beerfest. I highly recommend you spend several minutes listening to this as most of this stuff is gold my friends. Back to the actual movie, the other problem with this film is they take parts of it way too seriously and other parts are way too campy (I know… hard to believe they take camp too far but they do). The “Germans” in the film (their main competition in show) are horrible overacted but they’re command of the German accent is impressive (and yes, I’m being sarcastic here). That said, there are many parts of the show that do actually make you laugh out loud although most of them are sight gags or physical humor but there are several lines in the film that are sure to be used in everyday conversation by those who’ve seen the movie. Also, at the end of the day, just seeing the Broken Lizard guys doing “their thing” just brings back fond memories of Super Troopers and therefore lifts some of their less than stellar work to a tolerable level in this film.
All in all, I’d recommend it if you can’t find anything else to rent if you’re looking for a comedy but it definitely wouldn’t be my first recommendation. Also, if you’re a fan of the Broken Lizard films then it’s a must see… and they even hint at their next film at the end of this one (although I’m sure it’s 100% tongue-in-cheek as I can’t see the movie they hint at actually being made… or rather distributed). And if you don’t like physical humor or “stupid” movies in general, don’t bother as you’ll just hate it.
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