I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

Even though in reality Tucker Max may be a pretentious git and 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' is by no means among the best in comedy, I actually enjoyed the film. I haven't read the novel but I liked the title and the actors so I have been looking forward to it. Then the negativity that surrounded it after release lowered my expectations and when I saw it last night I laughed.

The movie does try to use shock value (how often does one witness someone with a shitty ass on screen) but that doesn't work in its favour. The dialogues are quite extreme and even offensive to women but I liked how the women react to it. The Drew character mostly because of his transformation from heartbroken women hater to a devoted lover. For me the best scenes were with Drew and I enjoyed watching his love story with Lara unfold.

The acting is quite good. Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults and Jesse Bradford are brilliant. Bradford steals the show with terrific dialogue delivery. This actor deserves some good scripts. Marika Dominiczyk is both sensual and sensational. Kerry Lyn Pratt is very likable.

'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' may not be a particularly great movie but it's fun once you're passed the misogynistic part of it. It doesn't really stay true to the title though.

Geoff Stills is about to get married. His best friend, Matt Czuchry, lies to Stills' fiancee, and leads Czuchry and pal Jesse Bradford on a two-hour distant bachelor-party trek, in which Bradford winds up in love with a nice exotic dancer, and Stills battered and in the drunk tank. Czuchry is banned from the wedding, and has an epiphany which gets him back into everyone's good graces.

Czuchry is a brilliant young degenerate who easily outargues his law school professor. Gets drunk every night, and has sex with random women. Is this the modern-day equivalent of those 1920s Demille movies? The ones in which everyone has a great time sinning for seven reels, only to find religion in the Eighth? We're clearly dealing with the elite here. Not only are they all seemingly very well-to-do at the least, but they are law students. The only reference to Christianity is to Stills' future mother-in-law. She disapproves of Stills and his friends on moral grounds, only to be chided for her lack of charity. At the end, Czuchry -- whose character name is one of the producers, the screenwriter, and the book this movie is based on -- may talk a good game of reformation and get back in everyone's good graces, but he's still the self-indulgent BS artist and sexual hound he was at the beginning. Does he actually believe the nice things he says, and will this lead him gradually into becoming a decent person? Given that the movie ends with him pursuing a blind girl to round out some weird list of handicapped sexual partners, the answer seems to be no.

I think I chuckled once so that explains the two stars. Other than that, it's a movie about a total douche-bag who's told he's a douche-bag, realizes he's a douche-bag, thinks about not being a douche-bag but, in response, only amps up his douchiness.

Mind you, my critique of this movie isn't a critique of Tucker Max- I hadn't heard of King Douche until shortly before viewing this movie. The movie is poorly written, poorly paced and, generally, poorly acted. It hints at redemption but instead sees the opportunity as a chance for another half-wit joke.

On the plus side, a movie like this can serve as a useful metric for people you know and/or have just met- If they like this movie, or Tucker Max, then you'll know said person is a douche-bag.

Having read the book a couple of years ago, I followed the movie's production blog with great excitement.

Tucker mentioned possible Oscar nomination for the script, more than $200M at the box office and revolutionizing Hollywood.

I walked into the theater with 2 other male friends in late 20s - both lawyers, one of whom actually went to Duke. We'd been in the bar for an hour before hand so in merry mood after several beers. One of the guys just picked up the bar girl he'd been after for months, so cause to celebrate. I love independent movies. Edgy scripts. Darkness and the anti-Hollywood approach. Swingers is one of my favorite comedies in the ilk. The perfect movie for the perfect evening ...

There were 4 other people in the cinema. Hmmm. It did not seem to bode well.

And the movie begins. I began with a grin on my face, prepared to laugh my ass off throughout.

About 40 mins in, I was still waiting to laugh. One of my friends, who hadn't read the book, was yawning. Two of the others in the cinema got up and left.

So, let me cut a long story short: Poor script. Underlit. Cheap grain. Little empathy for any of the characters; no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The story arc fell totally flat. I could live with all that if the thing was actually FUNNY. Alas, I managed a couple of forced chuckles.

We left the cinema with me having to apologize to my friend for having put him through the boredom. We should have carried on drinking in the bar instead of wasting our time on this film.

Tucker tipped this as a classic of our time. I'm not even sure it would have merited a straight to DVD release. He said it would top The Hangover in both acclaim, artistic merit and box office. Half a billion dollars later, wide critical and audience reception, and marked as one of the best comedies of the year, if he'd put that sentence in the script, it would have been the funniest line in the whole movie.

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.