Dissimilarly to Max's third officially published book, Hilarity Ensues, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell not only fails to incite comedy, but it even fails ultimately to evoke shock, or at least not in the same way that his first book did.
The film, essentially borrowing snippets and ideas from previous Tucker Max stories, is really just one hundred minutes of forgettable performances, weak one liners, and horribly scripted character dialogue. The strongest performance seems to come from the man playing Max, and half of this is simply through the pitiful situations he exposed himself to in the name of acting. While this movie wasn't totally bereft of laughter, it certainly left a lot to be desired, and even more so considering the material it was working with.
Tucker Max's character is portrayed as a smug, self-centred, obnoxious pig. While this may be very true to his character according to Max's own written accounts of his life, the film doesn't do justice to Max's self-imposed situations. Many of the scenes simply see Tucker Max stumbling in, making a fool of himself while spitting out overly scripted one liners, then the rest of the scene shows the looks of disgust and hatred on the faces of the women he was trying to score with while his friend Dan tries his hardest to fix Max's error and Drew stands in the corner of the scene occasionally legitimizing himself as an actor, and that is by acting like he is acting.
Of all the characters I have ever seen in any film or show, there are only two which I can say genuinely made me disgusted at their presence whenever they entered a scene. The first is the entire cast of the Jersey Shore (as I believe these people to be not quite human and therefore do not qualify as individual characters by themselves), and the second is Drew from this movie.
Drew's character is portrayed in such a light that he is hard to be believable; unfortunately, this is just as much the actor's fault as it is the writer's, as not only are his occasional one liners hardly believable as improvised threats, but the delivery of such just completely dismisses any idea that this character could be believable in any respect. His presence goes from being the guy insulting everyone, to the guy at the back not saying anything. The little shred of humanity portrayed in Drew's character sets him out to being a severely autistic person with the mind of an eight year old boy, and his antisocial behaviour so obviously juxtaposes Tucker's extrovert nature.
Of all the characters, the only one anywhere near believable is Dan, and even this is for the wrong reasons. While his scripts all feel wooden and too rehearsed, there is a slight quality that he as an actor possesses which neither of the other two actors seemed to have. Dan, by rights, is the voice of reason and the connection between Tucker Max and Drew, but this doesn't hold in the scenes depicting him getting drunk at the 'legendary' nightclub in Salem, elbowing a stripper while being more or less sexually molested (seriously), and then being assaulted by three strippers and thrown out of the club by security.
As I touched on earlier, this film was a comedy, but it didn't live to the expectation that it would actually make me laugh. No doubt some scenes were funny, and on the very rare occasion some of the dialogue was funny, but when the opening scene shows Tucker Max having sex with a deaf girl and then being interrupted by a squad of police officers allegedly responding to an animal abuse incident, all pretense of shock, one of the elements sampled heavily in this film, is completely forgotten. The final few scenes, depicting Tucker drinking alone, picking up a girl, both sharing a drink spiked with laxative, and then following him as he tries to find a bathroom in the hotel he is staying at, are used as a plot element to explain Tucker's 'epiphany' (through lack of a better word) and more or less beg for Dan's forgiveness at his wedding reception. Unfortunately these scenes, while slightly disturbing in nature, are so barely tied to his change of heart that it only really serves as a last alternative to this otherwise cliche plot element, and really only works as the straw to break the camels back in terms of storytelling credibility. In fact, it would be like a story ending with the line 'but then he woke up and it was all a dream.'
The film grossed less than one third of its budget in the Box Office, and Tucker Max himself blames the advertising campaign. The problem with blaming the advertising is that you are more or less blaming everyone who watches the movie, because like it or not, word-of-mouth is still one of the most effective forms of advertising. His film wasn't well received because it just wasn't likable, and despite popular belief it just takes a few people to talk about something for the popularity (or notoriety) of it to grow. I wasn't quite expecting a great movie to begin with, as most of the reviews and opinion of the film were unpleasant to say the least, but I dismissed these on the premise that being a fan of Tucker Max's work, I would enjoy the film he himself helped make.
*Fratire is a specific form of satire comedy pertaining to a style of writing popularised by Tucker Max and Maddox. The term is a horrible corruption of the words 'fraternity' and 'satire', coined by a New York Times reporter, and Tucker Max has criticised the name of the genre. I use the term sparingly as a respect to Tucker Max while still utilising it as a means of genre classification and description of his works.
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