Beerfest (2006)
Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar
Written by Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Eric Stolhanske
Starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Nat Faxon
Release Date August 25th, 2006
Published August 27th, 2006
I must admit that I have never been a fan of the comedy stylings of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. Their brand of frat boy juvenilia falls somewhere between the South Park guys shrill nihilism and fingernails on a blackboard as far as I'm concerned. So seeing their new film Beerfest, about an underground beer drinking Olympics, was not something that excited me.
My worst fears for how bad I assumed Beerfest would be were confirmed within the first 15 minutes of the film. Beerfest is yet another example of Broken Lizard's almost nihilistic approach to comedy, all grotesquerie, no real humor
Jan and Todd Wolfhouse (Paul Soter and Eric Stolhanske) have just lost their beloved grandfather. To honor his memory, at the request of their grandma (Cloris Leachman), they will fly to Germany to scatter gramps' ashes at his favorite spot Oktoberfest. Once in Germany the boys find themselves taken to an underground lair where a secret international beer drinking contest known as Beerfest is underway.
The German team, it turns out, are cousins of Jan and Todd. However, a family secret divides these clans and Jan and Todd find that grandpa and grandma have secrets that fall under the category of 'too much information', ick! To fight back against their evil German cousins and reclaim the name Wolfhouse from international infamy, the brothers decide to start the very first American beer drinking team.
Hooking up with some old college friends, including a scientist nicknamed Fink (Steve Lemme), a big fat hog named Landfill (Kevin Heffernen) and a former college ladies man and beer pong champion Barry (Jay Chandreskhar) who, in a perfect example of the broken lizard style of humor, has become an alcoholic male prostitute. Barry's current gig has him showing his privates to strangers for a dollar, hilarious gag or desperate cry for help from whoever wrote the bit? You decide, I'm going with the latter.
That is the problem with much of Broken Lizard's comedy stylings. So much of what they think is funny are half baked ideas that are often more grotesque than humorous. Take the introduction of the Fink character. His job as a scientist finds him masturbating frogs for cloning purposes. The gag at the end of the scene after the frog has climaxed is Fink lighting a cigarette, ho ho, how clever.
And that frog gag is likely the funniest bit in the movie. Funny in the kind of sad desperate way that marks much of Beerfest. The gags are all sad attempts to either out gross or out sick the likes of Jim Carrey or the Farrelly brothers. They achieve the grossness and sickness but they cannot find what makes it possible Carrey or the Farrelly's to push that gross envelope. There is no heart to Beerfest.
The Farrelly's especially make an effort to bring a heart to even their grossest outings. Broken Lizard does not do heart so gross is all they've got and for me that is not nearly enough.
I did not laugh once during Beerfest. Not once. I did not actively try not to laugh. I saw the film after watching the truly disappointing Idlewild and hoped that Beerfest might raise my spirits after such a thorough disappointment. Alas, Beerfest only worsened an already bad day at the movies by not providing one humorous moment.
From Donald Sutherland's shockingly awful cameo as the boys late grandfather to jokes about Cloris Leachman and a sausage to the masturbating frogs, there is nothing remotely funny about Beerfest. Even the drunkenness, the loads and loads of alcohol that is consumed by these characters fails to elicit a single laugh.
The Broken Lizard comedy troupe is simply too juvenile, too sophomoric and too unfunny to continue making movies. Dump them into a comedy central series next to equally unfunny comics like the blue collar comedy guys and shuffle them off the big screen. Their brand of humor belongs on late night cable where I can choose to ignore it in favor of yet another VH1 celebreality series.
Broken Lizard no longer belongs on the big screen where as a critic I am forced by job title to acknowledge their existence.
