I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

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.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. I have read the book and have been a fan for quite a while now, and when I heard there would be a film I was very excited. That being said, I'm going to do the ultimate evil of comparing the movie to the book. I thought Dan's character was spot on and well drawn, while Drew's attitude may have been a little extreme, and Tucker just seemed slightly "off" somehow but overall a good representation. Some of their antics were quite hilarious, but the main problem I had with this movie was that so many lines were quoted directly from the book (and sometimes out of context), so I already knew exactly what the guys were going to say. I think if they hadn't tried so hard to stick to the exact wording some of the dialog could have been improved or expanded upon. It was a fun ride though, and Tucker even ended up learning a thing or two, which I'm not sure I can say for his book counterpart! If I was the director I would have spent more time telling other stories from the book to help establish the characters, and then move into a condensed version of the film as it is for the second half. If that had been the case, I probably would have given it 9 out of 10. People who haven't read the book probably feel thrust in the middle of something they don't quite understand, and may not want to understand. I feel that it was a good movie, and very funny, but with a slightly different approach it could have been an awesome movie.

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.

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.