Beerfest (HD DVD)

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Sometimes a movie just gets better and better each time you watch it. And other times it's "Beerfest."

Despite an excellent, 1080 high-definition transfer to HD-DVD, the movie remains hard to watch. Why? Because the pleasure of looking at good, clean, vivid, well-defined video wears off after about two minutes if nothing is going on. With "Beerfest," the title pretty much says it all, and beyond the title, there isn't much else.

I'm sure you're familiar with the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. They're the fellows who brought us the silly "Super Troopers," which picked up a loyal following since its release in 2002, and the tepid "Club Dread," which people seem to have largely forgotten since its release in 2004. Now, following their customary two-year cycle, the merry Lizard band give us the 2006 release, "Beerfest," and it remains to be seen for how long people will remember it.

The version of the movie reviewed here is unrated, by which the filmmakers mean "now with more suds, sex and slapstick." As I have never seen the rated version, I couldn't tell you what the filmmakers added or subtracted or whether "more suds" constitutes a good time. What I can tell you is that the unrated version is 116 minutes long and the rated, theatrical version is 104 minutes. So, I guess the unrated version provides an additional twelve minutes of suds, sex, and stuff. I'm here to say none of it helps.

One thing is sure: You probably have to be a fan of beer busts (or you have to be loaded) in order to appreciate the film. As a tender innocent who doesn't drink, I'm afraid the movie's finer points flew by me. As its title implies, the plot, what little there is of it, is about drinking beer. Lots of it, in big, competition drinking contests. And doing stupid things when drunk. Since watching people do stupid things (e.g., "Jackass" and the like) seems all the rage these days, Broken Lizard (Jay Chandrasekhar, who also directed, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stokhanske) probably figured they could do them one better by scripting the stupidity. Wrong. It doesn't look as though the Lizards scripted any part of this film. The result leaves one awestruck by its sheer insipidness, as though the Lizards just made it up as they were going along, a series of improvisations where everybody thought they were being funny except the people having to watch them.

The film reminded me in part of 2004's "Dodgeball" with Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller in that it pokes farcical fun at a sporting event, with the protagonists being to varying degrees losers from the beginning and the antagonists seemingly invincible. The only difference is that "Dodgeball" was funny.

The bits and pieces of a story line concern a pair of brothers, Jan and Todd Wolfhouse (Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske), who own a Colorado tavern called the Schnitzengiggle, getting involved with some family members in Germany, the Wolfhausens, in an international, supersecret drinking competition in Munich. The brothers go to Munich following the death of their grandfather in order to spread his ashes around the fatherland. Whilst there, they meet the cousins who disowned them long before and accused their grandfather of having stolen a secret beer recipe from them before his fleeing to America. After Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen (Juergen Prochnow) and his German team of champion drinkers pretty much humiliate them, the boys determine to assemble an American team, train for a year, and come back and challenge the Wolfhausens for the crown.

Back in the States, Jan and Todd gather together some old drinking buddies. The first is Phil "Landfill" Krundel (Kevin Heffernan), a former winery employee who now eats for a living (don't ask). The second is Steve "Fink" Finkelstein (Steve Lemme), a scientist who fluffs frogs (you don't want to know). And the third is Barry Badrinath (Jay Chandrasekhar), a male prostitute who works in the gay community ('nuff said). The rest of the movie consists of the squad practicing day and night for the upcoming challenge, meaning they drink continuously, and as a climax to the story, the final confrontation.

Along the way, I smiled twice. The first time was when Donald Sutherland showed up in a surprise cameo as the dying grandfather, Johann, and the second time was in a scene with Cloris Leachman as the brothers' bawdy grandmother, Great Gam Gam. Otherwise, the comedy in the film is so lacking it's embarrassing. And, no, there is relatively little nudity or profanity for an unrated edition, but there is the expected amount of scatological gags, bathroom humor, crudeness, rudeness, and general bad taste. If any of this had been done to seriously offend somebody, it might have been an improvement, but mostly the film is just one bland drinking scene after another, with a lot of mileage gained from Prochnow's most famous film, "Das Boot," as the final contest comes down to the contestants drinking from glass boots. That's about the extent of the funny business. Indeed, there is more invention during the outtakes of the closing credits than in the whole of the movie.