It is upon their arrival to the club when eyebrows begin to rise. All the dialogue up to that point had been base and hilarious, including Max's boasting of sleeping with a deaf girl and Drew's two-minute monologue about the glories of a particular pancake breakfast sandwich.
Suddenly, however, Drew's silver tongue is tamed by an intelligent stripper who dishes him several quips about his weak Halo skills and his mother's alcoholism while he was in the womb. Before you know it, Drew is teaching the stripper's young son how to perform an L-ambush with his G.I. Joes - quite the wicked curveball.
That leaves just Max and Dan, but Max soon abandons him for an ulterior motive: seducing an elusive, uh, "vertically challenged" stripper. Dan, in a severely drunken state, is left to his own devices and ends up behind bars.
As a result, the wedding is in jeopardy, and Max is to blame. And we find him actually caring; he must, and does, find a fix. Tucker Max, empathetic? Does not compute.
In hindsight, I felt like I was watching a twisted episode of "Saved by the Bell" with Max as a promiscuous Zack Morris. The narcissist sacrifices his friends' well-being to propel his own desires, yet he's always eaten up by the guilt. This leaves the viewer semi-enlightened by the resolution. With that in mind, the movie has to be taken for what it is: a movie. There is a (recycled) plot and a message planted within, however feeble. If it was cut and pasted directly from Max's book, it would be pornography. I mean, Dustin Diamond (Screech Powers) and Elizabeth Berkley (Jessie Spano) have both flirted with the genre since leaving Bayside High, so in that regard, "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" comes out on top.
The movie has only crumbs of substance to digest, but it's very funny. The character banter is gut-wrenching, sometimes literally, like when Drew crafts bizarre physical threats to those who irk him. I'd suggest approaching it like "Dumb and Dumber," except "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" nailed a scene that blows Jeff Daniel's bathroom mishap out of the water. Pun fiercely intended.
That analogy fails, though, when it comes to longevity. While "Dumb and Dumber" is something of a cult classic, I can't imagine "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" will ever reach such heights. In a few years we'll struggle to recall Tucker Max's name evoking Lloyd Christmas stammering, "Swim? Swammi? Slippy?..."
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Good thing the plot for this is nothing like the plot of the hangover.
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I agree with the Anonymous above me, this movie was a lot better than The Hangover. It felt real. Where the Hangover was just over-the-top ridiculous, this movie is something I can relate to. I'd see it again, I love it.
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