2006

Director: Jay Chandrasekhar

Genre: Comedy

Many audience members don't care about the full quality of a film. Just like how every visitor to a museum isn't going to appreciate the minutia and quality of every single painting. People care about emotional response, and if someone finds a part of a movie funny, or scary, or sad, they might have a positive reaction, just because of that one moment. 

But the question of whether or not a movie is good is a completely different idea. And the idea of criticism is to make that question more clear. This is why judging movies based on sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes is so ridiculous. Just decide for yourself whether you liked the movie, and if you want to think critically, decide whether the movie was good. 

In Beerfest, there's a part where one of the main characters dies. They have a funeral and everything. And then out of nowhere, this character's twin shows up, and even insists to be called the same name as the deceased character. It's probably one of the most insane things I've ever seen in a movie. 

Just to have an actual emotional scene cut so ridiculously short is absurd. I cannot even wrap my head around this idea. Why have the character killed at all? Why pretend this is a real grieving moment? Why- what- how- why??

To be clear, I love this moment in the movie. When I was younger, I caught the last half of this movie on TV, and I've always remembered this moment. It's what made me re-watch the film, even though I'm not a big fan of these types of comedies. 

You may think this moment is just here to end the second act, which if you don't know, is typically the low point in a movie before the protagonists rally to the occasion. You may think it's just a dumb comedy, and they thought it was funny. 

To me, the moment reminds me something from a Coen brothers movie. They often juxtapose serious real-life moments with strange, vaguely supernatural elements. I got the same effect from this dumb comedy movie. I think this is actually an inadvertent commentary on the absurdity of life and the nature of film. And it's crazy that I'm saying that about a scene where a guy in a comical cowboy hat walks into a funeral home and chugs a beer. 

Anyway, the rest of film is alright. Some parts are fun. The humor is a little inconsistent and I could never understand the main characters motivation. It's a silly movie about drinking a lot of beer. The filmmakers didn't intend for this to be a masterpiece remembered throughout the ages. 

I'd almost bump up my rating just because of that one moment, but that goes back to my divide between criticism and emotional response. From an audience perspective, this one moment was enough to make this film memorable for me. But as a critic, I have to look at the film as a whole. 

⭐️⭐️