I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009) Review

This film is based on the best-selling book by the same name about author Tucker Max's supposedly real life sexual conquests. Max proclaimed that this film would whoop the shit out of The Hangover in the box office last year and re-invent the comedy genre. FAIL on both accounts. But let's talk about the actual film first...

Beer in Hell is the story of Tucker (Matt Czuchry) who takes his friends Dan (Geoff Stultz) and Drew (Jesse Bradford) to an out-of-town strip club for Dan's bachelor party. That's pretty much it. He must have been joking when he said "re-inventing the comedy genre" because nothing new was added to it all in actuality. There are some "haha" moments, but overall this film just wasn't really funny enough to be memorable. And trust me that I really wanted to like it because this is my kinda flick. I mean when you go as far as ripping off Wedding Crashers for your film's BIG gross out moment and then even go as far as to have a character mention the gag is from Wedding Crashers...well that's pretty lame. Seriously that was the nail in the coffin for me.

The whole film was too over-the-top to be considered true, but that aside - the film's only strength was the dialogue. And I am not trying to even give that factor too much credit. There were some zingy one-liners, but the conversation between characters sometimes felt delivered with too much exposition, like in Kevin Smith's earlier work but not as good. As for the one-liners though, that is why I am so pissed that I made the cardinal rule of watching a "film" before a "book". Now I have no desire to go back and read this book, which I deduct as 100% BS after doing some research, but I am sure is funny once you look past the depravity. Max seems to get the shit end of the stick, but if "broken" women are going to act like he is a rock star and throw themselves at him to be used as cum dumpsters...that should actually be on them, not him. Yeah he's a major douche but it takes more than two to tango, or something like that - just ask Billy Madison.

Too many friends with the same humorous taste have been recommending the book like hell to me, so maybe I can give it a shot once the thought of this film gets washed out of my brain a little. Max might be a best selling author, so he should stick to the books. While he blames the awful $5.3m loss on his $7m budget production due to poor marketing, the real reason is the final product. He now claims that Beer will be the best-selling DVD of '10. Now THAT is funny!

The Good:
- Some funny one-liners
- Decent acting from Bradford and Stultz

The Bad:
- Please don't make me repeat myself.


Avoid and go on living your life.