


True or False: Few things in life are funnier than chugging a beer and burping.

If you answered "False," you probably don't need to see Broken Lizard's new comedy "Beerfest." If you answered "True," you'll find plenty of reasons to laugh at "Beerfest." If, however, your answer is "True, but one of the things that's funnier is a Jewish scientist jerking off a frog," then "Beerfest" is likely to be one of the funniest movies you'll see all year.

Written by the men of Broken Lizard -- Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske -- "Beerfest" is an underdog sports movie based around the thinnest of premises.

Stolhanske and Soter play Todd and Jan Wolfhouse, who go to Munich (or several establishing shots of Munich, followed by sets in New Mexico) to return their grandfather's ashes to the family burial ground. After causing a scene at Oktoberfest, they find their way to an underground international beer games competition dominated by their cousins Otto (Will Forte), Gunter (Eric Christian Olsen) and Rolf (Nat Faxon), who are coached by the autocratic Baron Wolfgang Von Wolfhausen (Juergen Prochnow). After the German Wolfhausens humiliate the American Wolfhouses -- including their sainted Great Gam Gam (Cloris Leachman) -- Todd and Jan go back to the States vowing revenge. They assemble a drinking games Dream Team, featuring the semi-psychotic Landfill (Heffernan), former man-whore Barry (Chandrasekhar) and brilliant frog-masturbator Charlie Finklestein (Lemme).

"Beerfest" is a one-joke movie ("Hey what if the Olympics had cool competitions like beer pong?") and the level to which it sustains that one joke is almost admirable. In fact, if Broken Lizard had come in with a 90-minute cut of "Beerfest," I could probably recommend it. The current 110-minute cut, though, is just too uneven, too full of self-indulgent moments that don't work (as opposed to the many self-indulgent moments that actually do work, since the darned thing is pretty much entirely self-indulgent).

What are some of the things that work? They may be slumming, but any time you get Prochnow on a submarine or Leachman doing indecent things to a sausage, it's going to be funny. They may be obvious jokes, but any time you have Monique either fighting or engaging in slapstick sex, that's going to be funny. Chandrasekhar and Heffernan are reliably good, while Forte gets laughs pretty much every time he opens his mouth. Oh and who doesn't love a good Hands Across American joke? Plus, while stunt beer (or beer-colored liquid) seems to have been used in certain scenes, some of the chugging seems to have been done live, which is impressive.

What isn't so good? Stolhanske and Soter aren't funny here, which would have worked if they had played their parts as straight men, but they're going for laughs. There's a limited number of ways to shoot a guy chugging a beer and burping and director Chandrasekhar can't mix things up enough to keep the film from becoming visually flat. The biggest problem, finally, is that nobody in the editing room (Lee Haxall is the credited cutter) seems to have had any sense of timing. Chandrasekhar can't be faulted for letting the camera run to see what improvisational treasures might surface, nor for attempting to give equal time to each Lizard, but the final product is just too full of redundant gags (somebody told Broken Lizard that "three times is funny" and they must have heard "eight times is funny").


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