I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

The positive reviews for this film seem fake.

No one who saw this movie could possibly claim that it's good. I daresay one would be hard pressed to even mouth the words "its okay".

This film was bad. Very bad. Even if I ignored the horrible production values, the characters were totally unlikeable and the jokes were either out-of-date, fell flat or were just crude shock talk someone tried to pass off as envelope-pushing edginess.

I loved the book, and I really wasn't expecting this film to be even half has good. BUT I EXPECTED FAR BETTER THAN THIS.

I'm more than disappointed. I'm disgusted.

Having read the book a couple of years ago, I followed the movie's production blog with great excitement.

Tucker mentioned possible Oscar nomination for the script, more than $200M at the box office and revolutionizing Hollywood.

I walked into the theater with 2 other male friends in late 20s - both lawyers, one of whom actually went to Duke. We'd been in the bar for an hour before hand so in merry mood after several beers. One of the guys just picked up the bar girl he'd been after for months, so cause to celebrate. I love independent movies. Edgy scripts. Darkness and the anti-Hollywood approach. Swingers is one of my favorite comedies in the ilk. The perfect movie for the perfect evening ...

There were 4 other people in the cinema. Hmmm. It did not seem to bode well.

And the movie begins. I began with a grin on my face, prepared to laugh my ass off throughout.

About 40 mins in, I was still waiting to laugh. One of my friends, who hadn't read the book, was yawning. Two of the others in the cinema got up and left.

So, let me cut a long story short: Poor script. Underlit. Cheap grain. Little empathy for any of the characters; no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The story arc fell totally flat. I could live with all that if the thing was actually FUNNY. Alas, I managed a couple of forced chuckles.

We left the cinema with me having to apologize to my friend for having put him through the boredom. We should have carried on drinking in the bar instead of wasting our time on this film.

Tucker tipped this as a classic of our time. I'm not even sure it would have merited a straight to DVD release. He said it would top The Hangover in both acclaim, artistic merit and box office. Half a billion dollars later, wide critical and audience reception, and marked as one of the best comedies of the year, if he'd put that sentence in the script, it would have been the funniest line in the whole movie.

Even though in reality Tucker Max may be a pretentious git and 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' is by no means among the best in comedy, I actually enjoyed the film. I haven't read the novel but I liked the title and the actors so I have been looking forward to it. Then the negativity that surrounded it after release lowered my expectations and when I saw it last night I laughed.

The movie does try to use shock value (how often does one witness someone with a shitty ass on screen) but that doesn't work in its favour. The dialogues are quite extreme and even offensive to women but I liked how the women react to it. The Drew character mostly because of his transformation from heartbroken women hater to a devoted lover. For me the best scenes were with Drew and I enjoyed watching his love story with Lara unfold.

The acting is quite good. Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults and Jesse Bradford are brilliant. Bradford steals the show with terrific dialogue delivery. This actor deserves some good scripts. Marika Dominiczyk is both sensual and sensational. Kerry Lyn Pratt is very likable.

'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' may not be a particularly great movie but it's fun once you're passed the misogynistic part of it. It doesn't really stay true to the title though.

The lead characters of this movie are smart - this much is readily apparent early on. I get it.

What I don't think anyone involved in this movie gets is that "smart" and "not funny" are not mutually exclusive.

The characters in the movie are smarter than the people they encounter - great. How do they wield it? By lording it over them; it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Only someone extremely insecure would take pleasure in this. Descriptions of the Tucker Max character as being a sociopath are not an exaggeration. The problem is that - unlike No Country for Old Men or The Shining (also featuring sociopaths)- this is supposed to be a comedy.

In addition, for all the talk of the realism of the dialog, it just sounds fake. All the clever diatribes and snipes one after another just seem like things you wish you'd said after the fact.

Movies are supposed to be about escape and I just couldn't relax into a world where this guy gets away with so much crap and basically walks away unscathed, having learned nothing.

This is not a terrible movie, but it's not very good either.

I have not read the book but I have read and enjoyed the stories from Tucker's website in the past.

That said I was expecting more from this movie. There are some very funny moments but for the most part it was just boring. Pacing was the biggest problem with this movie, parts of it just plod along without anything happening that moves the story along. I honestly think this could have been made better but cutting about 15-20 minutes out of the film - of course by then the whole thing would have been about 45 minutes long.

There are some funny scenes but the rest just seems to be filler material. For instance, the first bar that Tucker and his pals visit and then walk out of - what was the point of that whole scene? It did not develop the story at all and should have wound up on the cutting room floor.

The movie, as a whole, seems to lack polish. As I said, cut about 15-20 minutes out of it and things would have been improved greatly but it would not have been long enough for a feature film.