I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

I was compelled to make an account on this site to write a review after reading the three most recent reviews for I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Those three reviews were far more amusing than the movie itself. If they were fake (as I suspect)...nice. If they were genuine reviews...what is wrong with you? I'm not going to write an extensive, piece-by-piece review of this movie, because this is all you need to know: It really isn't funny. When I saw the movie, there were perhaps ten people in the theater. I do not recall hearing a single laugh from anyone. I was sincerely amused only once; I mostly just forced chuckles at things that I recognized from Tucker's book and web site--things that were infinitely more funny to read about than to see on screen. For whatever reason, Tucker's stories just do not translate well to film (or he did a very poor job of translating them to film). My one friend who came with me to the movie said, "It wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be." I would be embarrassed recommending this film to anyone. I still think Tucker's web site and book are pretty funny, but if you want to be entertained, don't bother with the movie version of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

The lead characters of this movie are smart - this much is readily apparent early on. I get it.

What I don't think anyone involved in this movie gets is that "smart" and "not funny" are not mutually exclusive.

The characters in the movie are smarter than the people they encounter - great. How do they wield it? By lording it over them; it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Only someone extremely insecure would take pleasure in this. Descriptions of the Tucker Max character as being a sociopath are not an exaggeration. The problem is that - unlike No Country for Old Men or The Shining (also featuring sociopaths)- this is supposed to be a comedy.

In addition, for all the talk of the realism of the dialog, it just sounds fake. All the clever diatribes and snipes one after another just seem like things you wish you'd said after the fact.

Movies are supposed to be about escape and I just couldn't relax into a world where this guy gets away with so much crap and basically walks away unscathed, having learned nothing.

The positive reviews for this film seem fake.

No one who saw this movie could possibly claim that it's good. I daresay one would be hard pressed to even mouth the words "its okay".

This film was bad. Very bad. Even if I ignored the horrible production values, the characters were totally unlikeable and the jokes were either out-of-date, fell flat or were just crude shock talk someone tried to pass off as envelope-pushing edginess.

I loved the book, and I really wasn't expecting this film to be even half has good. BUT I EXPECTED FAR BETTER THAN THIS.

I'm more than disappointed. I'm disgusted.

This is not a terrible movie, but it's not very good either.

I have not read the book but I have read and enjoyed the stories from Tucker's website in the past.

That said I was expecting more from this movie. There are some very funny moments but for the most part it was just boring. Pacing was the biggest problem with this movie, parts of it just plod along without anything happening that moves the story along. I honestly think this could have been made better but cutting about 15-20 minutes out of the film - of course by then the whole thing would have been about 45 minutes long.

There are some funny scenes but the rest just seems to be filler material. For instance, the first bar that Tucker and his pals visit and then walk out of - what was the point of that whole scene? It did not develop the story at all and should have wound up on the cutting room floor.

The movie, as a whole, seems to lack polish. As I said, cut about 15-20 minutes out of it and things would have been improved greatly but it would not have been long enough for a feature film.

I gave this a 6/10 because I had some pretty good laughs throughout the movie. Some of the stories Tucker Max told were great. I'm a 24 year old college student and have a pretty dirty sense of humor. I wouldn't recommend this to my mom but I definitely would to my friends. I'm guessing the majority of the bad reviews came from older critics that are disgusted by the vulgarity of this movie. I do agree that the plot could have been improved. The stories were not quite as explicit as the book. The only character that I couldn't stand for the first hour of this movie was Jesse Bradford. He was very intelligent but a little over the top with his negative/depressing outlook on life(due to his recent break up). I would watch this movie again.