"Beerfest": Chug-a-lug, dummkopfs

The best joke in "Beerfest" is built around actor Jürgen Prochnow — the severe-looking star of a certain 1981 international hit film about a World War II German submarine — and a boot-shaped glass for holding beer. "Das boot! Das boot!" chant drunken revelers, anticipating a speed-drinking contest.

Pretty funny. But the moment is also the fleeting peak of inspiration in "Beerfest," an otherwise oppressively stupid comedy from the Broken Lizard boys, makers of the underwhelming and overrated "Super Troopers." As with the latter movie, "Beerfest" is an excuse to get happily dumb and decadent, which would be great if the movie was actually funny (as in such dumb-and-funny farces as "Animal House" or "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!").

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Beerfest," with Jürgen Prochnow, Cloris Leachman, Jay Chandrasekhar, Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme. Directed by Chandrasekhar, from a screenplay by Chandrasekhar, Stolhanske, Soter, Heffernan and Lemme. 110 minutes. Rated R for crude humor, alcohol abuse, nudity. Several theaters.

But "Beerfest" isn't funny. The film's writers — who are also, by and large, the main performers (one of them, Jay Chandrasekhar, is also the director) — are more interested in wallowing in sick jokes than setting them up and batting them out like pros. One sits through this thing feeling confined and burdened, instead of entertained, by gags about masturbating frogs, whorish grandmothers and men guzzling astonishing amounts of alcohol.

Prochnow plays Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen, an imperious German brewer who humiliates his American relatives (Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter) at Beerfest, an underground, secret alternative to Oktoberfest.

Back in the U.S., Chandrasekhar's character joins Stolhanske and Soter (plus Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme) in an effort to best Wolfhausen's team at speed-drinking and pointless bar games. The quintet trains together, has various crises and ... oh, who cares.

Cloris Leachman's shockingly lewd supporting role (with faint echoes of her memorable Frau Blücher from "Young Frankenstein") is a minor, burlesque treat. But that has everything to do with her veteran comic discipline than the gross-out dialogue this movie's clueless creators imposed on her.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com