As I headed out last night to the screening of Broken Lizard's newest comedy BEERFEST at the MANN's BRUIN THEATER in Westwood, I  found myself wondering exactly how the Broken Lizard troop would be able to make a full length feature film that was solely based on a beer festival?  Not that I didn't think the premise was interesting but with such a finite topic I was interested to see what sub-story would take the place of filling in the 80% of the film spent outside of said BEERFEST.   Though being the fan of Broken Lizard's last few films (SUPER TROOPERS, CLUB DREAD) as I am, I knew that even if the plot wasn't all their, at least the jokes would be, and much to my surprise neither was missing!!

As BEERFEST opens we are introduced to two brothers TODD and JAN WOLFHOUSE (PAUL SOTER & ERIK STOLHANSKE) at their grandfathers funeral, during which a video that their grandfather (a hilarious cameo role played by DONALD SUTHERLAND) recorded before he passed away containing his last toast to his family.  After the funeral Jan and Todd are met by their GREAT GAM GAM (CLORIS LEACHMAN) who tells the brothers of a festival in Germany where all the Von Wolfhausen family is buried and that they must take their grandfathers ashes to this festival and place them amongst the rest of their family.  This of course leads the two brothers to Germany during Oktoberfest, and as they reach where they are to rest the ashes of their recently departed grandfather they find out that their family history holds much more than they had ever expected.



After total humiliation in Germany at the hands of their distant relatives, the brothers set out to become the winners of the next years BEERFEST, to atone for their country and family.  With only a year to train, the brothers build their Team USA with friends from their past including LANDFILL (KEVIN HEFFERNAN) a competitive eating champion, FINK (STEVE LEMME) a Hassidic amphibian stroking science genius and BARRY (JAY CHANDRASEKHAR) a down on his luck drinking game champion/male companion.  With the team built and the festival just months away the beer drinking American team spends all their time practicing the drinking games of the festival as well as raising their tolerance levels, and all culminates in the biggest beer drinking show down ever on the silver screen (of course it may very well be the only one too).



All in all, the Broken Lizard crew has triumphed again with another hilarious and well thought out film that I am sure will be garnering the cult fans it rightfully deserves (just wait until all the High School kids are running around in German accents, screaming "Scheizen" and "Nein"). The best thing (in my opinion) about Broken Lizard's BEERFEST is that the film knows not to take itself too seriously, it doesn't try to fill in gaps with cheesy heartfelt dialogue.. err.. well it does, but only in the sense to poke fun at such scenes from other films.  As well the film pokes fun at the "ex deus machina" that seems to be overly used in todays cinema with their disappearing/re-appearing LANDFILL gag, and not to mention plenty of "blue" humor to add (I never knew hearing an 80 year old woman talk about how much sausage she can take on would be something I would laugh so hard at rather than vomit prefusely, but then again I guess we learn something new everyday).