I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is a comedy loosely based on the work and persona of writer Tucker Max, who co-wrote the screenplay for the movie. If you haven't heard of Tucker (I haven't until recently) he is (from Wikipedia): an American blogger and writer. He chronicles his drunken and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website TuckerMax.com, which has reportedly received millions of visitors since Max launched it for a bet in 2002.

To be honest, I wouldn't even spare a glance at his book or the movie if it wasn't for this Youtube video . Anyone whose book/movie gets attacked by crazy ass feminists because of OMG ITS TEH RAEP!!! is a okay guy in my book. I have not read the book, but the movie is, unfortunately, really bad. I expected some weird and crazy humor about our society like in Idiocracy, but I ended up with fart and shit jokes, like in Friedberg/Seltzer newest shitty movie bonanza. Let's go from the beginning, which is btw, the best part of the movie.

Dan, Tucker's best friend, is getting married and Tucker (played by Matt Czuchry) decides to throw him a bachelor party he won't forget. He decides that the gang (Tucker, Dan and Drew) is going to Salem to the awesome striper club without the no-touch rule. They take Drew with them because his last relationship ended badly few days ago, when he walked in on his girlfriend blowing Grillionaire, a famous rapper. So far so good.

Unfortunately, after the initial 15 minutes or so, the movie turns out into standard teen comedy about bunch of guys drinking and partying. I was hoping for some legendary quotes, but besides Drew's: I'm like a feminist, I can assert multiple contradictory positions, there is none. Instead of making jokes about today's sluts, feminists and other politically incorrect things, the dialogues mostly feature either:

1.    Tucker using his lame pick-up lines at random sluts, who immediately fall for him, of course
2.    Drew using his cynical and eloquent, but totally mis-timed remarks
3.    Dan trying to act as a buffer whenever an argument arises

And that formula is repeated all the time. Basically, Tucker is hunting for pussy, and that gets his friends into lot of trouble. And the movie ends with Dan getting married, Drew finding a girl and Tucker realizing that his ways of partying without responsibility should come to an end. Wow, original ending, which I certainly haven't seen before. Not to mention the whole scene where Tucker literally shits his pants because he can't find a toilet. Americans may have inherited the language and (parts of) culture from the British, but they certainly haven't inherited the humor.

Now, I hear that the book is actually better than  the movie, so it might be a good read for a few laughs. However, I don't recommend the movie.

Rating: 5/10

- review by Magnum

Last updated: 2010-05-28 03:22:50 by CoolAwesomeDuo

I can only assume that the people that defend this movie loved the book and consequently went in with rose-colored glasses. Having personally only had the "benefit" of skimming the book picked up from a bookstore clearance table, I can only judge this product as a standalone product: and it's awful.

I'm tempted to blame the actors, but it's only because almost every character in the movie is just so unlikeable. Not in a some roguish, incorrigible way as I think the filmmakers would have you believe - just genuinely despicable people. This gross misstep has to fall on the shoulders of the writer(s) and director. I have never seen a movie where anyone that has an ounce of integrity or shows a sign of a moral compass is depicted as the bad guy and gets brutally shot down every time.

I can appreciate a good antihero; it's just that even the "worst" of them usually have some kind of vulnerability or we at least understand their motivation or there is a foil to their character to show them the way or there is a "real" bad guy to root against. Unfortunately, the Tucker Max character is so irredeemable that by the end of the movie there is nothing he can reveal about himself that justifies his malice.

This is in addition to the fact that the movie is ugly to look at, lacking the production values of most straight-to-DVD movies (which I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell should have been).

Vincent Snavely