It was a trap.
Before premiering the movie adaptation of his book, "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell," Tucker Max asked audience members at the Lyric to share their embarrassing stories this past Thursday.
For those who grabbed the mic hoping to impress Max with their own stories of debauchery and raunchiness, all they received in return was a shower of verbal acid rain. Max deflected their comedic attempts and launched a barrage of crushing insults. No one escaped his relentless pride-bashing, not even his own crew members.
Max asked one if he had gotten a haircut.
"You look like Calvin," he said. "Like, where's Hobbes?"
Also present in the crowd were Howdy Doody, Shrek, Grover, Doogie Howser, Gwen Stefani, Billy Mays and John McCain.
Some managed to take the abuse in stride while others returned to their corners visibly shaken. The defeated might claim sucker punches, but how could you not enter the venue without your dukes up? If anything, Max simply affirmed what is suggested in every word of his writing: He is an asshole, albeit a self-aware one.
That's why a large group of people, including myself, was drawn to his book. We could abandon our finely-tuned moral compasses for a brief diversion of Tucker Max shock value. His wild memoirs contain no remorse. There is no lesson learned.
And that's what I suppose viewers thought they'd see transposed onto the big screen. Yet, what they saw was - yuck - romance and - gasp - morals. Granted, these were tangents off the expected grotesque humor and imagery.
The movie version of Tucker Max, played by Matt Czuchry, has two close friends: Drew and Dan, portrayed by Jesse Bradford and Geoff Stults respectively.
Dan is a well-groomed, socially humane guy who is happily engaged. With the wedding rapidly approaching, Max wants to bid his friend farewell with a bachelor party.
The celebration serves another purpose as Drew is struggling with a recent breakup. He walked in on his girlfriend pleasuring a talentless rapper played by Paul Wall. Since the event, Drew has been a recluse. He is a contradiction of self-deprecation while shouldering a complete hatred for all other beings, mostly females. The viewer meets him in a dungeon-dark room where he's playing Halo with specially modified controllers and headgear that allows him to trash talk his opponents. Max is forced to wrangle him out of his hole.
The trio drives hours away to a notable strip club, Dan having lied to his fiancee about their destination.
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?..."