Dude, I love you.
Yeah, man, I know. It's three in the morning, I get it. Yeah, man. I know you're sleeping. But I wanted to say you're an awesome friend and I love you. No, it couldn't wait. Is that so wrong? No, I'm not drunk. Yeah, I know I head-butted you on the way out of Beerfest. I was feeling the love! Seriously, you are the coolest in the world. I love you more than beer, and I swear I'm not drunk. I'm not. I'm sorry it creeps you out I'm saying this. You want to sleep but - Hey! I love this guy!
OK. Alright. Anyway. Beerfest.
Has there been a better movie about binge drinking? Like, ever? That's not a rhetorical question. Strange Brew and Bob and Doug McKenkzie come to mind. Eww-woo-coo-coo-chew-chew-chew-chew! Take off to the Great White North. Truly awesome. But Beerfest, seriously, dude - I feel like someone understands me and is addressing my needs as a human entity on this planet and stuff. That someone is a group of someones called Broken Lizard. Graduates of the Anything For A Laugh Institute of Technology. Right, the troupe who made Super Troopers. Yeah, they made that Dukes of Hazzard film, too.
We won't dwell on that one.
I don't know about you - and I definitely don't know how you slept through most of it - but Beerfest is a return to form, even if that form is roughly equivalent to the form I developed after multiple Oktoberfests my junior year. Which is to say this is for people who thought Talladega Nights was too structured.
I mean, finally, a film combining the finer points of Dodgeball and Fight Club that goes out of its way to celebrate the underrated sport of competitive drinking games, and finds time for Donald Sutherland to kiss a puppet.
What a time to be alive!
Theoretically, dude, I could spend an afternoon going from Snakes on a Plane to Talladega Nights ("the story of a man who could only count to No. 1") to Beerfest and never leave the nurturing bosom of a men's lifestyle magazine: gratuitous nude shots intended (with a knowing wink) for their gratuitousness; low blows so piercing your molars rattle; a heavy panic about homosexuality. You know the saying, write what you know? Broken Lizard took that literally.
What they know is that for a comedy to work - or at least, to put a smile on your face - you don't need characters we "care about." What they know is low of brow, but not so low they get nasty. (If I were a movie critic I might say "Beerfest is agreeably dumb.") They know fight scenes between fat people are always funny. They know the only decent ethnic group you can make fun of anymore are the Germans, and if you crack a Das Boot joke it's imperative you hire that film's sub captain (Jurgen Prochnow) and have him chug out of a shoe nicknamed, yessir - Das Boot.
"What's it about?" you ask.
Dude, snakes. Snakes on a plane. No, wait, I mean, it's about a beerfest. These two American guys travel to Germany to bury their grandpappy's remains (that's where Sutherland comes in). They stumble on an underground drinking-game circuit that's like the underground fight club in you know what. Humiliated by the superior chuggers from many heartier nations, they run back to the States in shame. And they assemble a team and train (and drink, then drink some more), and I'm not thinking a slap-happy Rocky so much a vague resemblance to Over the Top - that '80s arm-wrestling epic with Sly Stallone, only inspired and with vomit and beer.
Now to get serious a second.
Brainless and casual, Beerfest is standard late August stuff with a single exception. It's not forgettable. If This is Cinerama was tailored for Cinerama screens - Cinerama being an ancient filmmaking process devised by, like, the Mayans - Beerfest will play bars and brew-and-views in perpetuity. Mankind has demonstrated a willingness to live without Cinerama. But if anyone removes the television sets from our nation's dives - well, let's just pray it never goes that far.
Contact Christopher Borrelli at: cborrelli@theblade.com
or 419-724-6117.
First Published August 26, 2006, 1:36 a.m.
