Beer League: CE (R1 America - Echo Bridge Home Entertainment)
The Film:
Sports films can usually fit into any one of three categories. The first is the usual family fare that has a team of kids that are made up of really bad players, becoming good and winning whatever league/trophy they are playing for (The Mighty Ducks, Kicking and Screaming), the second category includes family films where an animal is really good at sport (see Air Bud and MVP: Most Valuable Primate for examples) and the final category is the ‘feel good’ film aimed at the older audience (such as Coach Carter and Rudy). You certainly don’t get many films that attempt to be like the first category, let alone successful ones, with toilet humor aimed solely at adults, yet director/writer Frank Sebastiano and writer/star Artie Lange have decided to give it a go.
Lange plays Artie DeVanzo, an unemployed loser who likes to drink and play softball for his local pub team. When he trips up his rival Dennis Mangenelli (Anthony Desando - Party Girl, Just The Ticket) as he runs for second base in the opening game of the season, a mass fight soon breaks out, landing them all down at the local nick. There, the sheriff comes up with a ruling that whichever team finishes worst that season, must leave the league. For Artie and his teammates this isn’t good news, especially as they have finished near the bottom every year and Mangenelli’s team have won for four consecutive seasons. Cue Artie doing everything he can to get his life turned around and his team practising so that they can win the league, and force Mangenelli’s team out.
The film follows the same sort of formulaic plot that kids sports films do, but adds in a disturbing amount of herpes jokes, aswell as the typical crude humour you would normally expect from this ‘grade’ of film (all the jokes are either about sex, sexuality or race). However, despite many of the jokes throughout the film being mildly amusing, there are also a few laugh out loud moments (such as the little kid who taunts Artie). Lange himself shouldn’t be allowed to act, but the supporting cast have some excellent roles, particularly for old man Dirt (Seymour Cassel - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Sealing Harvard) who gets the majority of the great jokes, Laurie Metcalf (TV’s Roseanne) as Artie’s mother and Ralph Macchio (The Karate Kid) as best friend Maz. Altogether, the film churns out a lot of jokes, some hit and some miss, whilst still managing to string together a decent another storyline with some decent actors, and a nice twist at the ending. If you are a fan of toilet humour, you would probably enjoy this. For me, it wasn’t as poor as I thought it would be and was fun to a certain degree. At least give it a rent.
The DVD:
Video:
Despite being a 2 disc Collector’s Edition, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment haven’t come up with the goods with regards to the picture. Presented non-anamorphically in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the picture lacks definition and has a grainy feel throughout (though it is better than VHS). There aren’t any scratches, but how a company can have the guts to release a non-anamorphic release in this day and age, especially on a two disc CE, is beyond me.
Audio:
Echo Bridge have given us just a single soundtrack for the film, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 one. Whilst all dialogue is clear and sound levels consistent, the surrounds aren’t used very much which is a shame. There are ample opportunities for the surrounds to be used to more effect, such as when Artie holds the stag party. There isn’t many explosions or sound effects, but it would’ve been more atmospheric to add a bit of background noise. The disc contains Spanish subtitles.
Extras:
On disc one, we start off with some start up trailers that play before you get to the main menu (though they are skippable). They are for:
- “Fifty Pills” (2:35)
- “Glow Ropes” (2:25)
- “The Big White” (2:01)
- “Running With The Hitman” (2:21)
Next up on disc one we have it’s sole other extra, an audio commentary with co-writer and director Frank Sebastiano and co-writer/star Artie Lange. It’s pretty standard fare as they basically crack a few jokes about making the film and praise everyone involved, though they do seem to drift into conversation about their other film they made together, Dirty Work.
Disc two starts us off with a short commercial parody for Beer Goggles. It’s basically a pretend product (obviously) that makes ugly people more attractive when you wear them. It runs for exactly one minute.
Then we have a featurette entitled Beer League: Behind The Scenes. Running for 18 minutes 38 seconds, it basically features some shots of behind the scenes footage with interview segments and finished scenes thrown in. Strangely, all the cast members look like they had better things to do in the interview segments with none of them seeming to look particularly bothered.
A Live From CineVegas featurette is the next extra, and follows Artie Lange at the premiere for the film at a Las Vegas festival. We then see him go up on stage and give a very drunken and quite amusing speech. He also seems to have gained quite a lot of weight since the film was shot.
After that, we have two Behind The Scenes Of… featurettes which follow Artie Lange behind the scenes of two TV shows to promote the film. The shows are Jimmy Kimmel Live (lasting 3:33) and The Best Damn Sports Show (2:50).
Next up is a selection of raw interviews with the principle cast and crew. Your usual backslapping affair, no-one really tells us anything interesting and when you’ve seen one of them, you’ve effectively seen them all. You can watch them as a play-all option (18:15) or individually:
- Artie Lange
- Anthony Mastromauro
- Michael Deeg
- Joe Lo Truglio
- Anthony De Sando
- Ralph Macchio
- Cara Buono
- Jerry Minor
- Frank Sebastiano
- Jimmy Palumbo
- Seymour Cassel
We finish the xtras with the recording of jokes (3:03) and ringtones (1:23), a photo gallery (5:30) and an unrated red band theatrical trailer (3:15)
OVERALL:
Film – C
Picture – C
Sound – C
Extras – C
Overall – C
View the comparison for this film here!