‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,’ Then Serve Up the Filmmakers

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Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The main problem with “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” based on Tucker Max’s memoir about a hard partying, devil-may-care womanizer, is that the screenwriter (Max himself) didn’t have the cojones to go all the way.

If Max is going to relate this “based-on-fact” story, so awesomely politically incorrect, why not just take it to the limit and make it totally offensive, instead of trying to placate the “audience” with stupid – and unbelievable – happy endings and upper middle class banalities like getting married and celebrating “relationships.”

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is the adventurous story of three young lads who set out to have a grand time on friend Dan’s (Geoff Stults) bachelor party, by kidnapping him against the wishes of his intended and going to out-of-town Salem, where apparently they have a strip club where you can touch the girls all you want. That’s called prostitution in most territories, apparently except Salem.

The Boys of Bummer: Geoff Stults as Dan, Jesse Bradford as Drew and Matt Crzuchry as Tucker Max in ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell’ Photo credit: Copyright © Freestyle Releasing, All Rights Reserved

Drew (Jesse Bradford) is the killjoy of the party, having just broken up with his girlfriend in the most absurd terms. But leave it to good ol’ Tucker Max (Matt Czuchry), who can out-drink and out-sex any man alive, and he’ll tell you that to your face. Or the face of any woman he’s trying to seduce.

The boy’s missteps continue in the town of Salem, where they find the nirvana of the all-touch stripper bar. Naturally Drew meets a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold, whose patter resembles an unfunny Comedy Central Roast. Dan, meanwhile, is having too good a time, causing enough trouble to get kicked out of the club and piss off his fiancée, who just discovered that Tucker and Drew have taken him to forbidden Salem.

How will these rambunctious fellows get out of this jam?

This is the type of film that exists in a parallel universe, where saying morally offensive things to strangers, especially strangers of the opposite sex, allows for not an invitation to jail or an asylum, but smiles and certain come-ons. Beer in Hell takes care of this early, with a scene where Tucker insists he not a misogynist, but proceeds to tell members of a bachelorette party that they essentially suck. In all forms and connotations of the word.

The Bachelorette Party in ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell’ Photo credit: Copyright © Freestyle Releasing, All Rights Reserved

Dan is a interesting character. He is the bachelor that is beholden to his beloved, but like every bachelor since party movies were made, he proceeds to get so blindly drunk he ends up severely beaten and incarcerated. But don’t worry, at the all-is-forgiven wedding he only has a single prop bandage on.

Drew is the luckiest of them all. Despite a penchant for saying the foulest invectives to women, manages to land a beautiful stripper – that’s right a stripper – to take him home and set him up in her sumptuous home, with her child. It’s a feel-good moment that might happen on the Planet No Freakin’ Way.

This films manages to be cruel and stupidly gross at the same time. Tucker loves to score with handicapped women, funny only to cretins. His bodily functions fascinate him as well, we’re privy to his explosive digestive problems, the second such screen portrayal I’ve seen this year (”Miss March” was the other).

Esquire Magazine used to have “now playing at the Hell Octoplex” in their year-end issue, an easy way to sum up the worst movies of the year. In the ultimate version of such a place, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell would be on every screen.

By PATRICK McDONALD Senior Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com