Strange Brew
Many comedy troupes have had difficulty transferring the characters from their five-minute television sketches into successful full-length feature movies. Proof of this lies in such bombs as It's Pat or A Night At The Roxbury. Strange Brew is one of the rare exceptions.
Spawned from the classic SCTV show, Strange Brew originated from a series of sketches involving two brothers named Bob and Doug McKenzie (played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas). During their weekly Great White North segment the McKenzies would drink beer, eat back bacon and speak hoser with plenty of "ehs" thrown in.
In the 1983 film version of Strange Brew, the McKenzie brothers lose their father's beer money and subsequently attempt to scam free beer from the Elsinore brewery by jamming a dead mouse into a beer bottle (a trick previously mentioned on the TV show). While at the brewery they land jobs in quality control and unknowingly stumble across a plot for world domination by the evil Brewmeister Smith (Max von Syndow). The Brewmeister is using the brewery to test and perfect his mind-control drug on the residents of the neighboring Royal Canadian Institute For The Mentally Insane. When the heir to the Elsinore fortune, Pamela Elsinore, becomes suspicious about her father's recent death and Brewmeister Smith's true motives, Bob and Doug are subsequently framed for her kidnapping. Once the truth is revealed, the boys team up with Pamela and Jean (Rosie) LaRose, a former Montreal Canadien turned mental patient/brewery worker, to try and thwart the Brewmeister before he can distribute the tainted beer at the upcoming Oktoberfest festival.
While this movie is definitely not Shakespeare, it IS clever enough to have a "Hamlet" twist written into the script. However, there are plot holes big enough to drive an Elsinore beer truck through. The only one I'll mention is the strange relationship between the brewery and the mental institute. The two buildings are physically connected, allowing the inmates to roam around the brewery. Many of the characters have roles in both the brewery and mental institute. Is this part of some bizarre outplacement program? The movie is dumb, but it is best to treat this film for what it is -- mindless fun. In fact, the whole spirit of the movie is done tongue-in-cheek.
The humor often sinks to the lowest common denominator, but it is still damn funny. The great thing about this movie is that the McKenzie brothers just act like idiots the whole time. They are totally clueless to their surroundings. With this formula the movie delivers a number of hilarious scenes with some great one-liners. The hockey scene with Bob and Doug manning the nets for the two inmate teams is memorable. Another notable moment is the courtroom scene during Bob and Doug's kidnapping trial. After getting reprimanded by the judge Bob says, "Geez, he's starting to sound like the old man. The next thing you know he'll be sending me out for beers."
Overall, I would say that this is a great drinking movie to see with your buddies. I first saw this movie when I was a kid. It was funny back then, and it is still funny today. That is the sign of a classic comedy, eh.
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Most of the movie takes place in a brewery while the McKenzie Brothers are either searching for beer or drinking it. The movie is also a lot funnier if you're gunned.
Many women do not fully appreciate a movie in which the most romantic line is "Geez you're nice. If I didn't have puke breath, I'd kiss you." Even if she is a fan of dumb-and-dumber type humor, she'll be too busy laughing to fool around.
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