The quintet from the sketch comedy troupe Broken Lizard are known for their frathouse, boozy humor, but when it comes to drinking games, they turn out to be pikers compared to the underground Olympians who gather in a Bavarian basement to prove their chugging prowess. Humiliated by the Germans, they slink back to America and spend a year training hard and drinking unspeakable concoctions (to learn how to suppress their gag reflexes).
The movie’s a lot cleverer than it has to be (the biggest challenge is to drain a boot-shaped stein called Das Boot, and sure enough, the chief antagonist is played by Jurgen Prochnow, star of the 1981 German submarine classic Das Boot). But it’s also cleverly stoopid; this is probably the only movie where you’ll see a guy fall into a vat of beer and try to keep from drowning by drinking his way to safety. After all, it’s not just loyalty that’s on the line, but national pride.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOs2RLC5qKE]