I Smell Like I Sound
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell /
Brian Prisco
Film Reviews | September 29, 2009 | Comments (45)
Oh, Tucker Max, you sad lame asshole. I know you all want me to Priscviscerate this cockmonger, but truth be told, all I can do is laugh at him. After almost a decade, the only way Tucker Max could capitalize on the tens and tens of pop-collared social deviants agro-trolling his website and fawning over his drunken exploits was to create an incredibly lame movie. While Max — and one can only assume his writing partner/nutbuddy Nils Parker — prides himself on being such a suave pickup artist who whittles his detractors with a silver barbed tongue, the resulting film is incredibly pussified. Vaginal, if you will. There’s a uterine gap in this flick so vast, it actually has the promise of giving birth to a better film — if only for the fact that Tucker Max was so intent on sticking his tiny Michael Baysian penis in it, and winking over his shoulder as he date raped it into a bland passed-out mess. All the while he was hoping everyone was admiring his toned ass as he plowed away in a sports bar bathroom stall. It’s a pathetic effort, seven or eight clever zingers drowned in a terrible bachelorhood romp I dare not compare to The Hangover because it predates even that. It’s Vince Vaughn as interpreted by John Travolta. It’s Tom Hanks doing Bachelor Party without any of the jokes. It’s a Miracle Whip and iceberg lettuce sandwich on Wonder Bread that nobody bothered jizzing in because the joke’s already on you. If they’re serving beer in hell, it’s Coors Light — watered down, barely effective, and marketed to guys who high five everything.
Everyone’s got war stories that begin “Oh, man, I was so drunk I…”: shit my pants, fucked a couch, got married to a Vietnamese hooker in Hawaii, made out with my cousin, threw up so hard it landed on my roof, showed my boobs to a Bon Jovi cover band for a dimebag, whathaveyou. Granted, Tucker Max’s are better than most. To discount Max’s essay style would be unfair and untrue. Bro-ski knows how to cobble a sentence together. While he writes mostly about getting shitfaced and peppers his stories with references to fetal alcohol syndrome and clown rape jokes, he might even be mistaken for a Pajiban. Problems arise when he steeps these stories in a heady broth of cocksure swagger and sexist and racist insults that reek like a novelty bottle of Sex Panther cologne. And there’s a severe lack of depth. It’s basically, “I got drunk, saw a hot blonde chick, called her boyfriend a fag, drank some Everclear and Red Bull and then got a blowjob in a limo, sprayed her with five ropes of cum, I’m so much cooler than you, The End.” Also, he’s got this bizarre obsession with sexually conquering a menagerie of defectives: deaf, blind, amputees, dwarfs, people from Jersey. I suspect his dream-bang would be a 12-year-old, Thai, mixed-gender, conjoined, octuple amputee. At least he’s thinking like an Oscar winner. High Five!
Tucker Max (Matt Czuchry) is a law student who’s better than you — so just get over it. Jealous? Of course! He fucks deaf chicks. He fucks blonde housewives. He fucks your mom while your dad watches. And he does it all while chugging Mountain Dew and bourbon. His friend Dan (Geoff Stults) is getting married this weekend, so they’re going to a strip club because OF COURSE THEY ARE. And not just any strip club, but one 250 miles away. It’s the Shangri-Lame of titty bars where the strippers are made of non-stick silicon, and for a shiny nickel, you can sodomize them while Quentin Tarantino shoots them in the face. Dan and Max gather the last piece of the cockumvirate, Drew (Jesse Bradford) — a video-game obsessed misanthrope who just caught his now ex-girlfriend fellating a diamond-toothed rapper named Grillionaire. Drew spends the rest of the movie being an incredible character — snarling and sniping and saying horrible horrible things to everyone. When he’s not calling anything with tits a whore or a bitch, he’s threatening to gut people and fuck the wounds. And awaaaay we go.
The guys hit a shot bar first to scam on a bachelorette party and give Max a chance to wield his word-smithery. While everyone else in the bachelorette party is a hot giggly girl, there has to be one girl who’s a bitch and a prude and no fun at all. She tried to bring Max down, but he gets to show off and actually defend himself against all his feminist and misogynist accusations. You see, misogynists hate women, and Tucker loves women, just not prudish bitches who bitch their bitchy thoughts, bitch. And it’s true, he’s not a misogynist; he’s just making really sexist jokes. This argument is akin to saying, “Look, I don’t have syphillis. I have hepatitis C. Get over yourself. Pam Anderson has it, and she’s not complaining.” Just itching. Constantly itching.
They reach the strip club and watch strippers. But Drew’s being a dick and chasing them all away with his curmudgeonry. So enter Lara (Marika Dominczyk), a witty stripper who fights Drew’s fire with fire. Max and Dan pay her to sit there and insult Drew all night, so they can hustle strippers. I’m expecting the film to be some kind of Kentucky Fried Movie, where we basically just spend time in bar after bar while Max relives his booze-cruising, trim-snatching days. Instead, the film tries to have a story and morals and apologies, and goes straight to shit. Quite literally — as later scenes feature him suffering watery diarrhea as he tries to find a bathroom. I would have respected Max if he just kept up with his asshole ways. Instead, he tries to get all sentimental like an R&B video. But like R. Kelly, he pisses all over everything. Well, actually he shits all over everything.
Drew ends up going home with Lara, who has an eight-year-old cliche. And instead of continuing their battle-worthy banter, Drew and Lara end up becoming sweethearts and show that the little troll has a heart of gold. Dan gets ditched by everyone, then accidentally elbows a stripper, busts open his face by falling through a table, and gets sent to jail for pissing in public. We learn the entire reason for the whole night wasn’t really to celebrate Dan’s ending bachelorhood, but so Max could fuck a midget stripper — played by Howard Stern regular, Bridget the Midget. And so Dan de-invites Max from the wedding. Low five.
There’s still more movie though. A lot more movie, which involves said shitting-of-the-pants jokes ripped from Wedding Crashers and Van Wilder and every other fucking movie you’ve ever seen involving strip club drunken shenanigans. The movie suddenly becomes about Max learning a very important lesson about friendship. But he doesn’t really. It gets so maudlin and faux sensitive, it’s actually kind of hilariously embarrassing. In a moment of Shakespearean poignancy, Max stares at his reflection in the mirror at the back of an elevator and wistfully whispers the title of the film. To himself. What a fucking vag! The moral of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is that Tucker Max is an asshole, and he doesn’t care, and he especially doesn’t care if you care. Brah. Meaningful High Five!
Despite the adorable Keri Lynn Pratt being cast as Dan’s wife to be, there aren’t actually any female parts in the movie. Well, there are women, but they exist solely to act as flints for Max’s sparking wit or to show their racks. They’re not even one note; they’re punchlines. Just like the real gals gandering for a go at Tucker’s pork-sword. Even Tracy Lords’ cameo is nothing more than a glorified wet fart joke.
The groom Dan just hangs out. Doug from The Hangover had more depth, and he was kidnapped for 90 percent of the film. Matt Czechoslov … Cszonka … Churchkey … the guy who plays Tucker Max nails it. He’s got this fucking smarmy smug smile that makes me want to napalm his ballsack and shove Crayolas into his urethra until I run out of colors. His character slurs like someone crammed 80’s Christian Slater up Aaron Eckhart’s butthole and rubbed them down with McConahagrease. It’s a wise choice, as Max isn’t a loudmouthed Pivenesque dick so much as slimy and sleazy. It channels pure Eckhart — either the In The Company of Men or the pedophile of Towelhead. But the greatest tragedy of the entire film is Jesse Bradford, whose dry deadpan mechanical delivery of heinous hell-fire lines makes this film almost worth enduring. Once his character begins to outshine Max’s dopplewanger, his character is promptly cast aside. The writers opt to douche him into a family man to the point you can almost hear Max grunting to Parker as he writes the script, “Dude, this heartfelt bullshit’ll totally bring in the fucking cooze. Now pass me a beer, so I can wash down some of this fag I’m brewing.” Then they spend the rest of the night lighting each other’s farts while listening to Nickelback and 3 Doors Down.
It’s telling that the events of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell are supposed to take place while Max is in law school, which would put them about ten years ago. When this stale shit was still funny. Like the prom queen wannabes he derides for falling for his shit while roping their faces with his seed, Max is still capitalizing on his antics from well-over a decade ago. He’s in his mid-30s now, and there’s a point where you have to stop whoremongering before it gets creepy. And yet, he’s made millions peddling his pedantry, so who’s the fucking joke on? He and his boys have started Rudius Media, because they’re planning a Troy Duffy-style onslaught of Hollywood. “Entourage” got old three seasons ago, so good luck with that. You’ll always have Joe Francis to collaborate with, right up until the district attorney nabs you for unlawful sodomy of a screenplay. High Five to Ten!
Comments
Posted by: Optimus Rhyme at September 29, 2009 12:11 PM
On behalf of the Inter-Fraternal Community, I apologize for the huge opening weekend.