Review of Club Dread (2004) by Mitchell H — 25 Apr 2010

Club Dread.

2 out of 5 stars.

2004's Club Dread follows up to the movie Super Troopers that went cult after it's DVD release. The Broken Lizard comedy film troupe reunites for this dreadful (pun intended) comedy/ horror spoof that misses on so many levels.

Coconut Pete's Coconut Beach Resort is a getaway to paradise. Set on an island for young swingers that no doubt the writers chose for their setting after they earned enough clout from Super Troopers success. I can't blame them. I would too. But things start suck-didaly-ucking when an unidentified machete-toting killer in a poncho starts knocking off one employee of the resort after another.

So yeah... Broken Lizard really sharted the bed on this one. Everything that they had going for them in Super Troopers gets thrown out the window. First off the film doesn't know what identity it wants to be. Trying to be a comedy with the 1980's horror genre a la "Friday the 13th." It's going for both laughs and scares and pulls of neither with a lot of frequency. Spoofing on victims running through the woods tripping and not being able to get key in the ignition you see what they're going for but the execution just isn't in it.

Worse off are the over the top characters put on screen. Jay Chandrasekhar's prissy British tennis instructor Putman is a 180-degree turn from the grounded Ramathorn in their previous film. Oy vey it's so hammy. That goes for the rest of them who just play stereotypes of their occupation. Poor Erik Stolhanske doesn't get one funny line until the end where he finally gets to have some fun. As the staff starts dropping, clues are given out about the murderer through what are the best jokes in the movie with a Jimmy Buffet-esque island owner Coconut Pete's old acid trip songs played by Bill Paxton. The song Piña coladaberg is a clever take on Margaritaville but these moments are few and far between.

There's not the riffing that they had in their prior flick. It's missed joke punch line followed by missed scare. The jokes take the easy way out with potty humor that's not earned like in Super Troopers. The movie finally shows some inventiveness in spoofing the horror clichés with it's ending. I wish that could have been utilized more. It's too little too late by that time and I was just waiting it for to be over or at least for them to put some more gratuitous nudity in it.

Broken Lizard are funny-ass folk but they miss in this one and they miss hard.

Miss "this" hard.