Written by: PBF
Beerfest is the fourth film by comedy troupe Broken Lizard. I watched the unrated version on DVD and found it to be more humorous than I remembered. I assume that this is because most (if not all) of any recent viewings before this were on Comedy Central or some other basic cable channel, thus it was edited in to being unfunny.
Johann von Wolfhouse, grandfather to Jan and Todd Wolfhouse, dies, and the brothers are sent to Germany by their Gam Gam (great grandmother) with his ashes. It’s Oktoberfest, and the Wolfhouses accidentally destroy a drunken celebration under a tent. They are taken to Beerfest, which is a drinking competition run by Wolfgang von Wolfhausen. Like the Olympics, teams from many different countries compete, and (unlike the Olympics) the Germans are the best. The German team are also Wolfhausens and it is discovered that they are the cousins of the Wolfhouses. However, the Wolfhausens are less than hospitable, claiming that Johann was a stable boy who stole a family beer recipe and fled to America with his mother (Gam Gam), who was a German whore. A brief drinking contest occurs between them and the Wolfhouses lose horribly, and the Wolfhausens dump the ashes of Johann all over them, disgracing them in front of a large audience. Upon their return to America, the Wolfhouses vow to return to Germany and beat the Germans at Beerfest, so they assemble a team and enter in to a year long training. During the rest of the film, somewhere around 1000 gallons of movie beer is consumed, and we are subjected to Jay Chandrasekhar’s ass. Small price to pay for good comedy.
Super Troopers also took a second viewing for me to fully enjoy, and now that is one of my favorite comedies, and in my opinion, Lizard’s best. I may now have to watch Slammin’ Salmon again because of this, but I refuse to watch Puddle Cruiser a second time, but that was completely different than the rest of these films and is most certainly an exception to that rule.
Beerfest worked for me because the comedy was solid and the troupe was really tight. It’s funny; as nonsensical and less plausible as the plot was than Salmon (a film that takes place in a restaurant), the comedy and interactions with each other were more natural, therefore the flow of the movie overall was better. Again, Broken Lizard are not some kind of revolutionary comedy geniuses, nor are they in it for the art (and they aren’t especially gifted actors either). In that respect it would behoove them to simply provide an above average comedy to distinguish themselves from the thousands of mediocre and unsatisfying films that are out there. They do accomplish this with Beerfest. Sure, it has your basic, seemingly low brow recipe: alcohol, nudity, language, scientist masturbating a frog. But the jokes are funny, the troupe works well together and the output is just simply a good comedy that you can return to time and again.
Again, don’t take this to mean that you are going to be watching a film on the same level as The Hangover, but it is definitely not as bad as, say, Dude Where’s My Car? Broken Lizard seem to have no middle ground. It is either pretty funny, or it isn’t at all. Beerfest is the former.
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