Entertainment HomeDVD review : Beerfest.
by: Anthony Chatfield
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The dulled down, beer drinking, male comedies of the world are actually not as common as one would assume considering the massive cult followings and frat house viewings they manage to generate. Every year or so, the next “quintessential” college guy movie will float to the surface and we’re left with Old School or Van Wilder, something so essentially devoid of intellectual redemption or sober humor that it has no place but to become a cult classic.
The first of these many “guy” movies was the venerable Animal House. It opened the flood gates and made it so that we’d have years of this type of film, and eventually each of them would be remembered as classics by the frat boys who grow up watching them in their adulthood.
Beerfest sets out, unabashedly with this purpose in mind. The crew of Broken Lizard, the masterminds behind SuperTroopers and Club Dredd come at us with a film that doesn’t try to be anything but a giant, beer drinking, guy film, complete with rampant nudity, dozens of new drinking game ideas, and a surefire way to end up naked in a field with a dead deer (it’s in there).
The premise is appropriately ridiculous. Two brothers are sent to Germany with their grandfather’s ashes to leave them at a top secret Beer drinking competition. While there, they learn that their grandfather fled the “old country” with his mother, stealing the top secret formula for Germany’s best beer. Subsequently they are challenged by their German cousins and destroyed. They immediately return home intent on restoring their family name and defeating the Germans at Beer Fest.
They get together a crew of drinkers, including a competitive eating champion, a frog “sample” extracting scientist, and a washed up male prostitute (all men they knew from college, presumably). To follow is a long and winding road of drunken experiments and learning how to drink as much as quickly as possible.
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There are no sub plots, no romantic interests. You don’t meet half of these men’s wives (yes they have wives) and you never see any objections to their lifestyle or questions about why they aren’t working. It’s just about the beer, and beating the Germans. For the college frat boy crowd, it’s a perfect outing in mindless, drunken humor. But, that’s probably the best state of mind to be in when watching this film, drunk.
It’s not lacking in humor though. I don’t want to make it sound completely dry, but it’s the kind of humor you expect from a frat boy movie, only these frat boys are in their late 30s.
Think Old School without the college and gallons upon gallons of beer. If that’s a winning formula for you, then this very well might be a movie you’ll more than enjoy.
For the rest of us, it’s just not that good.
Beerfest will leave you wondering why?
- Why are they drinking so much?
- Why are the Germans such stereotypical caricatures played by Americans with god awful accents?
- Why is Cloris Leachmen in this film?
And the whole slew of plot holes and unsatisfying drinking sequences will just frustrate everyone else.
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About The Author
I'm a self avowed unemployed writer, working on semi-constant basis to try and overcome the need to go and work a real job. I've written more than 200 articles and reviews and am constantly scouring the internet for any and all excuses and methods to make myself less dependent on corporate pay days. Visit my website at TheChatfield.com
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