Beerfest

Beerfest

Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

Written by Broken Lizard: Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske

Warner Bros.

The Broken Lizard team, should you combine moments from Super Troopers, Club Dread, and to a very minor extent, The Dukes of Hazzard, showed some promise that one day they might be able to get it all together and make a comedy that hits on most levels and become a bonafide classic. Beerfest is that movie.

The, uh, plot concerns the Wolfhouse brothers, Jan (Soter) and Todd (Stolhanske), whose grandfather has just died and has asked them to spread his ashes at a secret place in Germany during Oktoberfest. This secret place is home to drinking games galore, Olympic drinking complete with national teams. There, they meet their cousins, the Wolfhausens--Otto (Will Forte), Rolf (Nat Faxon), and Gunter (Eric Christian Olsen), led by their father Wolfgang (Jurgen Prochnow, complete with references to Das Boot), who don't like their American counterparts because they were spawned by a bastard lineage and a great-grandmother who was a whore (Cloris Leachman). Upon their first visit, they are shamed in the drinking games and plan to come back the next year better prepared--they recruit scientist Steve Finkelstein (Lemme), hot dog eating champion "Landfill" (Heffernan), and former friend Barry (Chandrasekhar). There's also the matter of a recipe of some classic, awesome German beer that the Wolfhausens want to get their hands on, all culminating in the upcoming competition.

Is it funny? I was crying in certain scenes. This is what I'm talking about, when movies are ridiculous and they should try to be as ridiculous as possible, and when a comedy is about to enter sentiment you throw another gag at it to snap out of it. Sure, there are times when this movie is too damn stupid, and there are times when I wished I could have been there during the creative process to throw them a couple of ideas, but this is a good comedy. Finally. After lots of piss-poor attempts this year, there's something to laugh at, sit back and have some fun. And of course, if you can find a theatre with this movie that serves beer, by all means take advantage. It's all about good times.

Another thing--you actually care about the competition. Kind of like Bloodsport in a way. Seriously, folks, grab a few friends and just spend a couple of hours forgetting your worries. Broken Lizard has made the perfect movie for that.