It probably goes without saying that in order to enjoy this movie, you have to be the sort of person who finds calling a German a "Deutsch bag" funny.

When I was screening submissions for the St. Louis International Film Festival last year, I saw a documentary about an underground beer Olympics called The Outdoorsmen: Blood, Sweat, and Beers, which was entertaining enough (Documentary footage of fat guys drinking insane amounts of beer while performing silly sporting events and trying not to barf? How can you go wrong?), but I questioned whether the film festival crowd would be down for seeing such a loud, repulsive movie about a bunch of guys who clearly don't give a fuck about their liver (however, if I just piqued your interest, the film is now available on DVD). Conversely, when I heard that the Broken Lizard team's (they of Super Troopers and Club Dread, underrated comedic gems both) next project was a fiction film called Beerfest that more or less covered the same topic, I felt sure that their audience would truly appreciate it and they might even have some comedic gold on their hands. And comedic gold it arguably is-this is the best film of this type (loud, dumb, drunk) since Old School, and for my money, between the two of them, Beerfest is the better film.

Of course, like most films like this that do eventually work, Beerfest is a little too much at first and is kind of off-putting in the over-the-top way it depicts the lead dumbasses getting drunk and acting stupid (sort of how the same way Wedding Crashers was off-putting last year during the extended "Shout" montage). Still, if you don't allow the first reel or so to kill your disposition toward seeing the movie, you're in for a good time. The basic premise here is that two heavy-drinking brothers, Jan (Paul Soter) and Todd (Erik Stolhanske) Wolfhouse, have to go to Germany during Oktoberfest to put their also heavy-drinking grandfather in his final resting place. While there, they are ushered into Beerfest, which makes the drinkers at Oktoberfest look like a lot of Zima-drinking soccer moms (the chugging of huge pitchers of beer abounds, as do tons of drinking games and whatnot). While at Beerfest, the brothers Wolfhouse are made fools of, their beloved Gam Gam (Cloris Leachman) unjokingly accused of being a whore, and their recently deceased grandfather of being a thief who stole the Germans' most beloved beer recipe before running off to the States. The rest of the movie has the Wolfhouses creating a team (including Broken Lizardites Steve Lemme as a scientist, Kevin Heffernan as a large, unpleasant man named Landfill, and director Jay Chandrasekhar as a formerly legendary drinking games player, who is now a cheap man-whore) and practicing for the next year's Beerfest, so they can reclaim their (and their Gam Gam's) dignity.

Now, it probably goes without saying that in order to enjoy this movie, you have to be the sort of person who finds calling a German a "Deutsch bag" funny. And it should also come as no surprise that the Germans in the film are portrayed about the same way the Frenchmen are portrayed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Also, not thinking logically about the events of the movie is a plus, as there are some plot holes that you could blow a tire in (not to mention the fact that every obstacle the protagonists face is very cheekily solved by narrative cul-de-sacs, for maximum allowance of laziness for the writing team). But really, how can you not love a film where, when the USA team tries the legendary beer recipe for the first time, one member says (with a look of boyish wonder on his face), "I want to put my dick in it"? Sure, you'll get alcohol poisoning just from watching this film, but it's so worth it.