Beerfest

Beerfest is a 2006 film from comedy troupe Broken Lizard. It's probably best described as an Affectionate Parody of sports movies that uses cultural and National Stereotypes to a ridiculous extent.

The plot of the movie revolves around brothers Jan and Todd Wolfhouse, whose German grandfather has just passed away. Charged with the task of bringing his ashes to the "family resting place" in Munich during Oktoberfest, they end up discovering Beerfest, a secret underground drinking competition. Beerfest is presided over by Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen, braumeister of the Von Wolfhausen brewery. He is furious at Jan and Todd's late grandfather for purportedly stealing his family's beer recipe, "the greatest in all the world", calling him a "thieving stable boy" and "bastard son of a whore". Americans are banned from Beerfest, and as Jan and Todd try to state their right to be there, they are handily beaten in an inpromptu speed chug competition by the German team. After suffering humiliation at the hands of the von Wolfhausens, they return home with the intent to return to Beerfest with the first American team--and kick the Germans' asses.

Each team consists of five players representing their country. Events include:

• Volume Chugging -- Exactly What It Says on the Tin; roughly a gallon of beer, whoever could chug it the fastest wins.
• Trick Quarters -- One team does a fancy coin-bouncing trick, then the other team has to match and top it. If the other team fails to do so, they win.
• Long Distance Quarters -- Bouncing a quarter into a bucket from at least ten meters out. Whoever makes the longest shot wins.
• Monkey Chug -- One player from each team hangs upside down and chugs a beer. Whoever finishes first wins.
• Long Pour -- One player stands on a tall staircase and pours a pitcher of beer down on a teammate. First to finish the beer wins (splashing the beer gets you disqualified).
• Bat Spin -- Spinning around in place, then racing to a single beer on a table; whoever gets there and chugs it down wins.
• Beer Pong (US variant; AKA Beirut) -- Throwing ping-pong balls at a rack of six glasses of beer. Each throw into the other team's glass removes it, and makes them drink. Whoever clears their side first wins.
• Beer Pong (Int'l variant) -- Table Tennis, with two beers on each corner. First to a certain score wins.
• Turbo Quarters -- While chugging, each team bounces as many quarters into a glass as possible. Whichever team bounces the most wins.
• Depth Charge -- Players must take turns to pour some of their own beer into a small glass floating in a much larger amount of beer. Then wait a few seconds for the next player to repeat this. Whoever makes the glass sink to the bottom loses.
• Thumper -- "What are we playing?" "THUMPER!" "Why do we play it?" "TO GET FUCKED UP!" One player performs his/her own hand gesture, immediately followed by the gesture of any other player. This player then performs his/her own gesture followed by another players, etc.. and so on. When a cue is missed or when someone responds too slowly, the "violator" must drink.
• Line Chugging / Das Boot -- All five players chug in succession, with the fifth member taking the oversized Boot glass. Whoever finishes first wins (a team that spills any amount of beer loses).

Tropes used in Beerfest include:

• Actor Allusion: Baron von Wolfhausen (Jurgen Prochnow) had a bad experience on a U-Boat.
• The Alcoholic: Virtually everybody in this movie. The film even opens with a disclaimer warning the viewer not to attempt to drink like the characters.

"...If you attempt to drink the amount of beer the characters do in this film, YOU WILL DIE."

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Disaster Dominoes turns the entire crowd against them when a little boy on stage is injured and started crying.
• Avengers Assemble: Putting the American team together.
• Backup Twin: Landfill's twin brother, Gil, who ends up getting Landfill's nickname, his spot on the team...and even his wife.
• Bait and Switch: The plans for the Wolfhausen recipe are stolen by Cherry, but it turns out that she merely stole a prototypical recipe for "a new low-carb strawberry ale. It's... okay."
• Berserk Button: A badly timed insult from the German team during the final insult untaps some epic "Jew Rage".
  • "I happen to have MARRIED that plastic fuck doll!"
• Big Game: Beerfest itself.
• Butt Monkey: Fink.
• Chekhov's Gun: Johann Wolfhouse's beloved doll Popo, which turns out to be the hiding place for the von Wolfhausen beer recipe.
• Congruent Memory: Fink's theory of "Drunken Recall", which is used on Todd (by having him chug an entire bottle of Goldschläger generic gold-flecked liqueur) so that they can find the entrance to Beerfest.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Cherry pushes Landfill into a vat of beer, where he ultimately drowns.
• Culture Equals Costume: every single team at Beerfest. The German team wears lederhosen, the Mexican team dress like ranch hands, and the Swedesh team is made up entirely of hot blonde women wearing ski vests.
  • Fink during the course of the entire film (with his ever-changing wardrobe of yarmulkes).
• David Versus Goliath
• Deus Ex Machina: How they replace Landfill after he is murdered - he just happens to have a twin brother who is better than him at everything, including drinking and sex.
• Disaster Dominoes: Jan and Todd's initial arrival to Oktoberfest.
• Don't Try This At Home: The start of the movie warns of overdrinking and not to recreate what the actors are doing. Indeed, most of the "beer" in the movie was non-alcholic.
• Double Entendre: GamGam gets a lot of these after Wolfgang tells the boys she was a whore.
• Drunken Master: Barry is much better at drinking games when drunk
• Eagle Land: So, so much.
• Eureka Moment: Fink discovers the secret to beating the Boot at a bathroom urinal.
• Fake German: The three von Wolfhausen boys (all Americans) as well as the emcee (British).
• Fallen-On-Hard-Times Job: Landfill runs a carnival booth now. And Barry? "It's $10 for a BJ, $12 for an HJ, $15 for a ZJ..."
• Fanservice Extra: At Oktoberfest when a bar fight causes a guy to slip and grab onto the tube top of the nearest girl. Newly stripped girl slips herself, grabs onto the tops of two other girls, and strips them. And then those two girls slip, and pull down the tops of the three girls behind them. A chain reaction of 6 uncredited topless blonde Fanservice Extras that has the men at Oktoberfest—as well as the male audience—cheering at each stage. Pure Fan Service all the way.
  • This is by far the most likely scene in this movie to make female viewers roll their eyes and lament that All Men Are Perverts.
• Freestate Amsterdam
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: GamGam is a very sweet old lady who was a prostitute in her youth.
• Hypocritical Humor: Landfill, who is said to have converted to Islam while in jail, regularly imbibes alcohol and ingests pork products. Maybe he's just not that devout.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: "We're not that drunk."
• I Never...
• I Was Quite a Looker: GamGam, who was a beautiful young Bavarian whore.
• Killed Off for Real: Landfill
• Miracle Rally
• Noodle Incident: A lot of them, including the Z-job (if you have to ask, you can't afford it).
• Oh, No, Not Again: When Barry wakes up in the field. Naked. With blood on his lips. Next to an eviscerated deer.
• Oktoberfest
• Opposing Sports Team: The Germans.
• Plot Hole: Never during any of the Das Boot challenges are the Germans seen having to turn the boot at the right moment.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Of course not. It's supposed to be the trick the American team figures out to get an edge over them.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The American team. Oh so much.
  • To give you an idea, one of their members is a homeless male prostitute.
• Rated "M" for Manly
• Sequel Hook: Willie Nelson invites the guys to be his teammates at "Pot Fest".
• Serious Business: Those who don't obey the rules of Beerfest tend to get shot.
• Shoot the Messenger: Upon learning that the Americans know the recipe to their beer, Baron von Wolfhausen orders the delivery boy to be disposed of immediately. The grandsons shove hoses down his throat, in his ears, and up his nose, and tap the keg.
• Shout-Out: Baron von Wolfhausen had a bad experience on a U-Boat once.
  • Not to mention the "Das Boot" competition itself.
  • There are also a number of veiled or not-so-veiled references to lines from Super Troopers, usually delivered by the same actor. The most obvious is probably Landfill asking for "six Schnitzes."
  • The "You do not talk about Beerfest" rule is also a shout-out to Fight Club.
• Stealth Pun: Schnitzengiggle, the Wolfhouses' restaurant and beer.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: The American team desensitizes their taste buds via actual ram's piss.
• Tar and Feathers: Cloris Leachman's character and her son are tarred and feathered in turn of the century Germany.
• Theme Naming: Hammacher and Schlemmer, named after a Sharper Image-type store that deals in high-end gadgetry.
• Training from Hell: Par for the course for the Germans, but then self-inflicted by the new Team USA.
  • How intense could it be? They drank ram's piss.
• TV Genius: Fink, who goes so far as to develop a scientific approach to drinking.
  • All There in the Manual: The segment explaining "Fink's Position", used by all of the American team during the final line chug, didn't make it into the final cut of the film. It's included as a deleted scene on the DVD, however.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Landfill, despite being an overweight competitive eater, has a very attractive wife.
• Underdogs Never Lose
• The Unintelligible: The English team (not British, as there's a separate Scottish team) is painted this way, with their use of Cockney rhyming slang. If you actually know Cockney, however, you can understand them perfectly.
  • So what did they say?
• Wild Teen Party: The American team attends one of these to brush up on their drinking game skills.
• You Have Failed Me...: The Baron has Cherry executed when it's revealed that she stole the wrong beer recipe.