I Hope They Serve beer in Hell – Movie Review
In reference to this post that I made a couple of weeks ago, I finally made it to the theater to see Tucker Max’s “I Hope The Serve Beer in Hell”. The movie was platform released three weeks ago; this was the first weekend that it was being shown at a theater in my city.
This is somewhat of a difficult movie review to write because I knew a lot about the project before seeing the film. I’ve read the book of the same name and I have regularly read Max’s blog cataloging his thoughts and experiences during this process. Furthermore, in an effort to preserve objectivity, I purposely have held off on seeing the summer blockbuster, ‘The Hangover’, since many moviegoers have suggested that this film is much better.
Overall, the movie is good and definitely worth watching. Anyone who enjoyed r-rated comedies such as ‘Wedding Crashers’, ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’, ‘Knocked Up’, ‘Old School’, ‘Road Trip’, etc. will like this movie.
The humor and jokes in the film, while predictably crude, are also ratcheted up a bit in terms of their intellect. There were a few jokes that it took me a second before I realized what was being referenced. This in and of itself is a good thing; but some people – especially those who are a little younger – will probably miss the humor in some of the dialogue. Overall, the writing is razor sharp and the character development is much better than many shallow comedies, such as ‘Super Troopers’, or ‘Observe and Report’.
The three main male characters are of course Tucker, then Drew and Dan. The interesting thing about this is the fact that even they are all the same age, they are all in very different stages of their lives. This creates a dynamic where the three of them can more or less have their own story lines – a plot development that normally would not contribute to the film and largely could be a detriment as well (see ‘American Pie 2′ and ‘American Wedding’). However, this actually works very well in this movie and in many ways sets it apart from other films targeted at the same demographic.
One aspect of the dialogue that is unique is the fact that there are many obscure references to the book and to various elements of Max’s message board folklore. While these little tidbits were neat and are kind of a treat – an inside joke for people reasonably familiar with Max’s work, I speculate that those who are less knowledgeable and experienced with the culture that is IHTSBIH will probably find the subject matter off-putting; especially if they’re the only one in the theater that is not laughing. This was especially true during an early scene where ‘Drew’ (a main character drawn from parallels to ‘SlingBlade’, a commonly referenced friend of Max’s in the book) went off on an uncomfortably long diatribe raving about a ‘Pancakewich’; a knock off of the McDonald’s breakfast sandwich the McGriddle. The dialogue in that scene was taken almost verbatim from a legendary rant on Max’s message board by the real ‘SlingBlade’ that had taken place several years ago. And, although the blurb originated as a off-hand yet brilliantly funny remark on a message board, it unfortunately failed to deliver the same magic on-screen.
In the end, this movie is definitely worth seeing. There’s nothing revolutionary about the plot or anything like that, and it’s not going to win any Gold Statues, but the movie is highly entertaining, which is the most important thing. About a month ago, I sat through a chick flick (I won’t say which one, because I actually liked it) with Angie so that she would watch IHTSBIH with me. She laughed a lot and acknowledged that she liked the movie, more than I did actually, even though she is not a fan of Max’s book or his perceived identity at all. For a film that pokes fun and will likely make enemies out of a wide variety of groups, from fat girls to strippers, to midgets (excuse me, little people), to Catholicism (which was my favorite line in the whole movie), for it to still be a winner in her eyes pretty much sums it up better than anything else I can say.
