Even in a wacky, stupid comedy like this you have to have some thread of a plot.
Beerfest (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:26
Fresh:7
Rotten:19
Average Rating:4.4/10
Consensus: Beerfest features some laugh-inducing gags, but is too long and the pacing too uneven to form a coherent, functioning comedy.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for pervasive crude and sexual content, language, nudity and substance abuse.
Runtime: 1 hr 56 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Aug 25, 2006 Wide
Box Office: $19,037,418
Synopsis: With a title that insures against accusations of false advertising, BEERFEST is a raunchy and genial amalgamation of ANIMAL HOUSE, STRANGE BREW, FIGHT CLUB, and every clichéd sports film ever made.... With a title that insures against accusations of false advertising, BEERFEST is a raunchy and genial amalgamation of ANIMAL HOUSE, STRANGE BREW, FIGHT CLUB, and every clichéd sports film ever made. Written by and starring comedy troupe Broken Lizard (SUPER TROOPERS, CLUB DREAD) and directed by Lizard member Jay Chandrasekhar, the film is unapologetically sophomoric, never missing a chance for a belch, flatulence, bared breasts, or Cloris Leachman doing lewd things with a sausage. After the death of their bar-owning German grandfather (Donald Sutherland), Jan (Paul Soter) and Todd (Erik Stolhanske) Wolfhouse must travel to Munich to scatter his ashes. Fortunately for them, it's Oktoberfest, but the brothers aren't there very long before they embarrass themselves at a public celebration and find themselves at Beerfest, an annual international underground beer-guzzling competition. When they compete, they are disgraced by their German cousins, the Von Wolfhausens--headed by father Jurgen Prochnow--who claim that the Wolfhouses' late grandfather stole a beer recipe from them many years before. Jan and Todd return home to train for next year's competition, incorporating into their team a few old college pals--male prostitute Barry (Chandrasekhar), burly Landfill (Kevin Heffernan), and science nerd Fink (Steve Lemme). For BEERFEST to work, it's imperative that viewers find humor in exaggerated German accents. Cloris Leachman appears to be enjoying throwing all comic caution to the wind, and Prochnow gets to lampoon DAS BOOT in a funny sequence. Big, sloppy, and ridiculous--compliments in this case--all apply to the third Broken Lizard feature, which is sure to burp its way into every fraternity house film library until the world ends. [More]
Starring: Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Will Forte, Ralf Mueller
Starring: Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Will Forte, Ralf Mueller, Eric Christian Olsen, Jürgen Prochnow, Cloris Leachman, Nat Faxon, Gunter Schlierkamp, Donald Sutherland, Willie Nelson, Steve Lemme
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Screenwriter: Kevin Heffernan, Erik Stolhanske
Producer: Bill Gerber, Richard Perello
Composer: Nathan Barr
Studio: Warner Bros.
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Reviews for Beerfest
I felt oddly respected: Neck-deep in barley and boobs, marinated in urine, Beerfest panders shamelessly to the 15-year-old in this 30-year-old... without assuming he is a 15-year-old.
My best suggestion for people who insist on going to see this immense waste of time? Go drunk.
Ok, so maybe you don't absolutely have to have a Y chromosome and be 14 years old (or have the mind of a 14-year-old) to appreciate the freshmanic humor that is Beerfest. But, oh, does it help.
Beerfest plays like a party that's gone on too long, when the buzz has worn off and the hangover starts to set in.
A movie that feels as if it was conceived, executed, edited and ultimately released by people in an advanced state of gassy inebriation.
If you like to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, you'll probably like this movie. If you're a cognac person, the scene where the great-grandmother performs a sex act on a sausage may not be refined enough for your tastes.
It's amusing on occasion, but also garbled, repetitious and potentially offensive.
This movie will be as essential to the DKE house as a Sharpie for writing jokes on a passed-out brother; it's pure guy humor.
Among the cast, Chandrasekhar is easily the funniest of the Lizards, though in fairness, each has his moments. The movie does, too; just expect them to shrink exponentially depending on your level of sobriety.
Watching endless scenes of sport drinking gets tiresome and by the time the film reaches the final competition, you might feel too bloated to laugh.
Scene by scene it's funny enough, but it goes exactly where you expect it to go, which makes the last third a lot less funny than the first two-thirds.
The script, cowritten by all the members, is too sloshy and bleary-eyed to throw any darts that hit anything but the wall.
Beerfest won't kill you, but unless you're in a certain brew-guzzling youth demographic, you might find yourself wondering why you're not laughing at this helping of bad-news beers.
Making a comedy that celebrates binge drinking and cretinous behavior isn't a crime against nature. Making one that's as brutally unfunny as Beerfest is.
In telling the story of a secret Fight Club-style drinking competition that literally takes place beneath Munich's famous Oktoberfest, it hopes to become the ultimate frat-boy beer-drinking cult movie. I don't think it gets there.
Best viewed while sloshed, Beerfest is idiotic, tasteless and irrepressibly good-natured in other words, a frat-house classic.
Beerfest is tedious and, at 112 minutes, too long to sustain a sophomoric, one-joke comedy even for the presumed target audience of older male teens and the college-age crowd.
Accept Beer Fest for the ludicrous frat-boy fantasyland it strives to portray and there's a chance you might laugh at most of it. There's a better chance that you'll hate yourself for it the next morning.
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