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Beerfest
Ah,
those halcyon days of youth. Your friends surrounded you
after a congenial coinflip or perhaps a high-speed game
that looked oddly like charades, and offered gentle words
of encouragement: "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"
Good times.
Good times that
Broken Lizard remembers and has taken to ridiculous extremes
with Beerfest. Combining the worst excesses of eighties
sports movies with eighties teen sex comedies, the troupe
puts their own weird little spin and comes up with something
that works pretty well.
For one thing,
the troupe has no fear. Or maybe that's no shame. They stoop
low but aim high, throwing jokes at a rapid pace but not
willing to let go until they've run a bit to its natural
conclusion. It's a dangerous tack to take, but the risks
pay off more often than not.
Director and
troupe member Jay Chandrasekhar sets the tone early, opening
with a deadly serious game of quarters. The sequence could
have been lifted from any one of a dozen movies about "underground"
sports, and its played with intensity before a resolution
from out of left field.
At the funeral
of their grandfather, brothers Jan and Todd Wolfhouse (Paul
Soter and Eric Stolhanske) get charged with the task of
returning the old man's ashes to the ancestral burial grounds.
Tradition dictates it happen during Oktoberfest, where a
mysterious stranger will guide them and initiate them into
family rituals.
Their journey
through the dark streets of Berlin passes them through just
about every stereotype of German cinema. It's surreal and
pretty funny in Chandrasekhar's insistent repetition of
some of the imagery. Ultimately, they end up at Beerfest,
where they discover secrets of their heritage they didn't
want to face, and suffer humiliation at the hands of the
Von Wolfhausens. The greatest shame of all may be that Americans
are considered laughing stocks of the international drinking
circuit, and…
Well, you probably
can guess the rest of the plot. But the troupe takes so
many left turns getting there that much of the plot seems
surprising. The script calls attention to its clichés in
bits that may not make you laugh, but may at least cause
you to nod appreciatively, such as the sudden presence of
Kevin Heffernan playing a dual role.
It may be that
Broken Lizard gleefully exposes its contrivances because
though they are clever writers, as performers they lack
the versatility of groups like Monty Python's Flying Circus
or The Kids In The Hall. The best actor among them may be
Heffernan, whose had the most varied characterizations in
the Broken Lizard films.
Each
of them has their charms, though, capable of carrying scenes
and writing to the strengths of their individual deliveries.
Still the actor with the most break-out potential (and okay,
he had a British accent in Club
Dread) is Chandrasekhar, who can hold leading man
gravitas even while portraying the cheapest of manwhores.
One scene with him is funnier than a Deuce Bigalow
double-feature. Okay, so that's praising with faint damnation,
but it is meant as praise.
Though the troupe
stays at the center of the action, they are generous in
building supporting roles and casting them with top-notch
comic actors. The Groundlings contribute a few choice members,
including Saturday Night Live's Will Forte, doing
his best Teutonic villain. Cloris Leachman steals every
scene as the Wolfhouse matriarch. Only Jurgen Prochnow feels
wasted, as if Chandrasekhar thought that making numerous
Das Boot references would be enough for characterization.
Exactly who in their audience would get that?
Still, the movie
gave me two or three of the hardest laughs I've had all
year in movies - intentionally. Their manic energy rarely
flags, and kudos to them for setting up an extremely elaborate
excuse to expose beer maiden's breasts onscreen. It's not
the gratuitousness I respect, necessarily, it's just that
it's nice to see sex get its due in a raunchy comedy.
Overall,
this may be the strongest Broken Lizard effort yet. It's
unabashed, unapologetic and in some ways, refreshing for
the end of summer. Rating: 
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