I can quote the entire film, and yet every time I watch it, I laugh as if I have never heard any of the lines before.

It’s kind of like Police Academy. Only there’s no academy. Also, it’s funny. The plot is simple enough for any drunk or high viewer to grasp. In fact it may enhance the experience to be inebriated. Enhance. Enhance. Seriously though, Super Troopers is probably quite funny when viewed under the influence but it is not necessary. We have a chapter of Vermont State Police that prefer to engage in buffoonery and chicanery rather than take their jobs seriously.  This behavior has finally caught up to them as they face being shut down due to budget cuts. The local police department would benefit from this by getting more money. In addition to that the two squads are rivals and the local cops would love it if the highway cops were jobless. Soon a dead woman is found and a truck filled with marijuana is pulled over and each group of cops try to break the case open and thus eliminate their competition.

This film is the most quotable in the Broken Lizard collection, and just one of the most quotable movies in general. Not just lines, but entire scenes of dialogue. The film employs a simple formula: marginal acting, shallow plot, basic direction and hilarious script. The film is just very funny from beginning to end. The odd thing is, I had to watch it more than once before I realized this. After having seen it nearly a hundred times, I am not sure why that is. But I’ll tell you, this film has the best replay value I have ever encountered.

There really is not one person in this that is not funny. Every one of the Lizard, Brian Cox, Daniel von Bargen. One might make the argument that this film is a bunch of comedy sketches pieced together, however the scenes pretty easily transition in to each other and only seem segmented from a scene quoting standpoint. In that respect, I feel that it is quite the opposite. A film that can easily be split up in to sketches, and even (as Puck and I have mentioned a few times) make a pretty funny television program.

Understand that this film (or any of them) is not out to make a dent in the art house universe, and it really just seems to be a vessel in which to facilitate clever bits of dialogue and ridiculous conversations. In that respect, it is a successful version of Mallrats (both films happen to be the second for both Lizard and Smith).

I suppose this really is not so much a review as it is a glowing recommendation for a great comedy. It might seem absurd to some, but this could be a different generation’s Caddyshack or Ghostbusters. It’s also a fine example of how simplicity can succeed against over complication.

Coconut Pete is without a doubt, the best role Bill Paxton has ever played.

Club Dread is the 3rd film by Broken Lizard, following Super Troopers. There is a resort called Coconut Pete’s Pleasure Island, in Costa Rica. It is your basic hedonistic paradise; lots of naked people, booze, drugs, etc. Coconut Pete is a former rock star in the vein of Jimmy Buffet who will be quick to remind you that his hit Pina Coladaburg was written 7 years before Margaritaville. On this island is the fun police, live Pac Man games (in which you might see the fruit from the game having sex with each other) and the legend of Machete Pete. Machete Pete supposedly killed a bunch of staff and castrated himself and ran off in to the woods never to be seen again. Soon after this story is told (around a campfire ala Friday the 13th Part 2) dead bodies start being found with cryptic clues carved in to them. With no way off the island, the staff must figure out which one of them is the killer.

I purposely watched all other Lizards films before Super Troopers. I did this, because it had been a while since I had seen some of the others, and there were a couple I had not seen at all, and I wanted to know if Super Troopers would still be the best after viewing them all. While I still think it is, Club Dread is a very close second (and Beerfest is not that far off, either). The reason that it is second, is only because it is not as consistently funny as Troopers. However, when it is funny, it is hysterical. Bill Paxton is just superbly funny as Pete, who is drunk all of the time and cannot remember most things he did, including making entire albums. This is especially funny as the killer quotes his lyrics and uses his one of his songs as a sort of victim blueprint, but Pete cannot offer any assistance as to what the song actually means. The film also has some of the weirdest/funniest lines of any of their films: “This guy’s gonna be picking his teeth outta my dump!” and “You get a fun fucking warrant!” Sometimes, however, the jokes are not funny and provide an uneven feel.

What also works well in this film, is the horror genre spoof. It’s not as obvious as “What’s your favorite scary movie?” but it has all the elements of classic horror films. Young people having sex and getting wasted then getting killed. Cheap scares, the “killer legend” story that is told. But it also does a good job of being a half decent real horror picture as well. The movie gives everyone a motive early on and will keep you guessing who the killer is. It is a good slasher horror, that not only does a great job of parodying the genre, but makes it funny for the most part, while being both tongue in cheek and clever. Not saying it’s the first film to do this, but one of the better ones. In fact, it actually kind of stands apart from the other Lizard films as an almost serious attempt to make a film that is not just humorous, but one that demonstrates the troupes film/film making knowledge.  It has slick timing and is just a very well directed film.

When I say that Dread is second to Troopers, I mean by a very small margin. Aesthetically it is superior, but its continued misses in humor (humor being one half of the film), just knock it down to that second spot. Troopers, which is a straight comedy, is mostly comedy hits and thus solidifies it as the more even, and more effective of the two.

Best shot of the film: decapitation from the head’s point of view. It watches the body it was separated from flop around for a minute.

Beerfest is the fourth film by comedy troupe Broken Lizard. I watched the unrated version on DVD and found it to be more humorous than I remembered. I assume that this is because most (if not all) of any recent viewings before this were on Comedy Central or some other basic cable channel, thus it was edited in to being unfunny.

Johann von Wolfhouse, grandfather to Jan and Todd Wolfhouse, dies, and the brothers are sent to Germany by their Gam Gam (great grandmother) with his ashes. It’s Oktoberfest, and the Wolfhouses accidentally destroy a drunken celebration under a tent. They are taken to Beerfest, which is a drinking competition run by Wolfgang von Wolfhausen. Like the Olympics, teams from many different countries compete, and (unlike the Olympics) the Germans are the best. The German team are also Wolfhausens and it is discovered that they are the cousins of the Wolfhouses. However, the Wolfhausens are less than hospitable, claiming that Johann was a stable boy who stole a family beer recipe and fled to America with his mother (Gam Gam), who was a German whore. A brief drinking contest occurs between them and the Wolfhouses lose horribly, and the Wolfhausens dump the ashes of Johann all over them, disgracing them in front of a large audience. Upon their return to America, the Wolfhouses vow to return to Germany and beat the Germans at Beerfest, so they assemble a team and enter in to a year long training. During the rest of the film, somewhere around 1000 gallons of movie beer is consumed, and we are subjected to Jay Chandrasekhar’s ass. Small price to pay for good comedy.

Super Troopers also took a second viewing for me to fully enjoy, and now that is one of my favorite comedies, and in my opinion, Lizard’s best. I may now have to watch Slammin’ Salmon again because of this, but I refuse to watch Puddle Cruiser a second time, but that was completely different than the rest of these films and is most certainly an exception to that rule.

Beerfest worked for me because the comedy was solid and the troupe was really tight. It’s funny; as nonsensical and less plausible as the plot was than Salmon (a film that takes place in a restaurant), the comedy and interactions with each other were more natural, therefore the flow of the movie overall was better. Again, Broken Lizard are not some kind of revolutionary comedy geniuses, nor are they in it for the art (and they aren’t especially gifted actors either). In that respect it would behoove them to simply provide an above average comedy to distinguish themselves from the thousands of mediocre and unsatisfying films that are out there. They do accomplish this with Beerfest. Sure, it has your basic, seemingly low brow recipe: alcohol, nudity, language, scientist masturbating a frog. But the jokes are funny, the troupe works well together and the output is just simply a good comedy that you can return to time and again.

Again, don’t take this to mean that you are going to be watching a film on the same level as The Hangover, but it is definitely not as bad as, say, Dude Where’s My Car? Broken Lizard seem to have no middle ground. It is either pretty funny, or it isn’t at all. Beerfest is the former.

Broken Lizard’s first film, Puddle Cruiser is just not very good. It isn’t funny and less silly than the later films. It’s quite sloppily put together, the acting is deplorable and it’s very uninteresting. Some of the conversations last way too long and a lot of the jokes are quite long winded and just unfunny. You can see the beginning of the troupe’s rapport with each other start to form, but it isn’t strong enough yet to pull the film off.

The Slammin’ Salmon is the most recent film that has been released by the comedy troupe Broken Lizard. This one was directed by Kevin Heffernan, as opposed to Jay Chandrasekhar, who directed the troupe’s previous films.

“Slammin” Cleon Salmon is a former boxer that owns a restaurant called the Slammin’ Salmon (this will be the last mention of the film’s title). He bets the head of the Japanese Yakuza $20,000 in a rousing game of Japanese Albino Hunting and loses. He needs the money by tomorrow so a challenge is placed to the staff of the restaurant to make $20,000. The prize is $10,000 to the top waiter (don’t worry;  it’s part of the comedy, not a plot error) while the punishment for the lowest performing waiter is a broken rib sandwich. Cleon is played by Michael Clarke Duncan, so as you may imagine, that is a large and painful sandwich.

Broken Lizard has a small collection of films including Super Troopers and Beerfest. It seems like the more movies they make, the less funny they are. I have not yet seen their first, Puddle Cruiser, so I can only speak from Super Troopers on. Broken Lizard films are not really “deep.” They basically involve a fairly simple plot that can plausibly involve at least 5 people in the central story. So you aren’t going to find too much that is very cerebral or even that much character development past basic character traits (asshole, romantic, lunatic, etc.) that rotate between actors film after film. That being said, something has to take me for a ride during my 90 or so minutes. Obviously, that would be comedy. I mean, if I am not really interested in who wins the contest, that’s cool, just make me laugh the whole time. This is where the film failed. There were some funny lines and moments, but it was really uneven, and most of the film was just not funny. I thought for a moment that it might be because there was too much interaction with other characters not played by Broken Lizard, but even when it was just them together it just wasn’t as funny as the earlier films. And the restaurant setting was not as funny as it could have been. The setting really was almost irrelevant in the sense that this type of contest could have happened anywhere. So there wasn’t a lot of restaurant humor, ala Waiting, because the fact that they work in a restaurant was not really the focal point. It was merely a setting to facilitate a contest in which everyone could act nutty in case a small audience was watching them. Each one of the cast individually had at least one funny line (except for Erik Stolhanske; all his lines were patently unfunny for some reason). Michael Clarke Duncan was funny more than he was not, but when he wasn’t, he really wasn’t.

There were some things that were just too silly, like all guests ordering 6 of every entrée, a character named Dick Lobo that was the creator of a show called C.F.I. Hotlanta and the constant use of the character name “Guy.” Honestly, it was just a big mess.

There were all kinds of random people in the film from Olivia Munn (oh my) to Lance Henricksen (trivia: shares a birthday with Puck). My favorite probably being a 5 minute scene with Jim Gaffigan.

I seriously hope that this descent into lackluster entertainment does not continue to go the M. Night Shyamalan route,  as Super Troopers 2 has been announced and that is my favorite Broken Lizard film thus far.  I would not say that this film is totally unwatchable, but I now understand why I didn’t know it existed until I saw it on Comedy Central one day.