Unseen Movie Review: Beerfest

By Robert Dixter Aug 24, 2006, 14:39 GMT

When American brothers Todd and Jan Wolfhouse travel to Germany to spread their grandfather’s ashes at Oktoberfest, they stumble upon a super-secret, centuries old, underground beer games competition – “Beerfest,” the secret Olympics of beer drinking.  The brothers receive a less than warm welcome from their German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens, who humiliate Todd and Jan, slander their relatives, and finally cast them out of the event.  Vowing to return in a ...more

How come no one has thought of this before?  A movie about guys who compete in beer Olympics.  It’s such a great idea you would have thought all those studio executives or Mel Gibson would have thought up something like it before.  (By the way, have you noticed how Mel’s friends that came out to support him all agreed that he was not an anti-Semite, but he was a raging alcoholic?  As they say in Rushmore, with friends like you who needs friends).

How many grown men with wives and a 22 month old son out there wish they could go back to those college years when they could drink anything in any amount (yes, even mixing Bailey’s and vodka) and still wake up for school bright and early the next day at noon?  It’s not that I really want to see the new movie ‘Beerfest,’ but rather I wish I could live it.

The film is by the comedy team Broken Lizard. I find these guys to be really funny. They have a laid back “we can make anything funny” demeanor about them.  They’re willing to go that extra mile to make a scene funny, even if it’s something as simple and stupid as chugging syrup.  But it always feels like they would be doing this anyway even if you weren’t watching them, unlike Jim Carrey who needs to have every set of eyes on him when he’s cashing checks for 20 million dollars.

Yet, I’m still 50/50 on seeing this movie. I loved Super Troopers. Part of it was that I stumbled upon the movie on DVD by accident.  I did not stop laughing from beginning to end. Kind of like when I saw the pictures of Pammy Anderson’s recent marriage to Kid Rock. (How many times is this girl going too get married in a white bikini?  Is she trying to break Liz Taylor’s record?)

I was so excited when they released Club Dread, I half Nelsoned my neighbor’s cat in the yard. But the film was awful.  There were no funny moments, the film seemed to drag with little plot, and the goofiness the troupe seemed to master in Super Troopers was non existent. So now it is literally a toss up whether to see ‘Beerfest’ or not.

The previews look funny, but we all know studios cut up films to sell them in the trailers.

Even though I’m still 50/50 on seeing the new Broken Lizard film, I’ll probably head out and see it because it is all about beer and I’m trying real hard to capture a little of the old days.