This film was created by Gawker's first alternate Douchebag of the
Decade, Tucker Max, from his eponymous and phenomenally successful book of
autobiographical stories. You can find several of his stories
here, on his home page.
What is Beer in Hell about? A short summation of Tucker's character
tells you want to expect from the film. The overview is provided by Tucker
himself: "My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively
drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim,
ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with
more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a
raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important
way. I share my adventures with the world."
The best seller and this film consist of those adventures. I agree
completely with Max's self-description above. Tucker Max is a smart, lazy,
privileged, and arrogant preppie, a smug frat boy who goes through life
acting as kind of an unpaid insult comedian, gratuitously offending
everyone he conceives to be beneath him, which means virtually everyone.
Since this assessment of Mr. Max is not in dispute, the only item left to
discuss is whether his stories are funny, since watching or reading about
such anti-social and mean-spirited adventures would serve no purpose if
they did not amuse. I suppose Max would disagree with that. He would
probably counter that obnoxiousness has its own intrinsic value which
exists independent of humor. But I don't buy that, and I've made obnoxious
behavior a lifelong pursuit, so I suspect that the average person would
disagree even more strongly.
The answer to the original question is that the stories can be funny,
but the humor is only sporadic. Some of Max's quips and insults are
absolutely brilliant, while others just seem nasty. Here's one I like: "I
would fuck you so deep that any man who could pull me out of you would be
declared king of England."
The film script had to attempt to pull Tucker's various picaresque
anecdotes into a single story. In that tale, Tucker's goal in life is to
have sex with every possible kind of legal woman: mute, blind, old, young,
small, large ... whatever. At the start of the movie he's nailing a deaf
girl. The next item to be ticked off on his checklist is a "midget." In
order to pursue a tiny stripper of notoriously questionable virtue, he
almost ruins the life of his best friend, who is about to be married. The
plot follows him on a Dwarfquest road trip in which he alienates his
friend, then attempts a reconciliation. Will he succeed in obtaining
forgiveness? Is he even sincere about wanting to?
Who cares?
The key point is that the flick is funny once in a while, but probably
not often enough to merit a couple of hours from your life unless you
believe that obnoxiousness is always fun to watch, irrespective of whether
it contains any wit.
