Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, the new comedy flick based on his book of the same name, opens with police busting into a house and arresting the self-titled main character while he is having sex with a deaf girl because they mistakenly thought he was raping her. While the coppers are pinning the butt-naked Tucker to the ground, the girl sets them straight by screaming, “He wasn’t raping me – he was FUCKING me!” and exclaiming that she “wants his cum.”
Abandon all maturity, ye who enter here.
For those not privy to the interweb sensation that is Tucker Max, he’s a writer whose short stories, based on his adventures of drunken revelry and carnal indulgence, have made him world famous. In his own words:
My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole.
I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead.
Along with Maddox, Tucker Max is regarded as one of the founding writers of “fratire,” a fledging literary genre concerning masculinity and political incorrectness. Given the popularity of both Max and Maddox, it was only a matter of time before one of them got a movie deal, and with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, fratire has hit the big time. As a film, Max’s creation is a hilarious, if not groundbreaking ride, and as a study of masculinity and manhood in modern America, it’s even more valuable. While the oeuvre of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell has been covered before, as Tucker Max himself co-wrote the film’s screenplay, we get a view of modern masculinity straight from the horse’s mouth.
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is based loosely on Tucker Max’s short story “The Austin Road Trip,” though it also incorporates plot elements from a half-dozen of his other tales of Epicurean excess. The first half of the film concerns a fictionalized version of Max (Matt Czuchry) goading his best buddies Dan (Geoff Stults) and Drew (Jesse Bradford) into changing their plans and going to an out-of-the-way strip club as their last night together as single men, as Dan is due to be married in a few days. The plan goes wrong, though, when Tucker’s ulterior motives for going to said strip club are exposed, landing Dan in jail for a night and threatening his engagement to Kristy (Keri Lynn Pratt). The second half of the movie consists of Tucker trying to rebuild his friendship with Dan, finally recognizing the true extent of his narcissism and apologizing to him at the end.
Max’s movie is at its best when the plot is de-emphasized and the focus is on the strong dialogue. The film is chock-full of hilarious quips that caused the audience to drown out the movie with their laughter. For example, during one scene in which Tucker and friends are driving, Tucker lets rip a fart and Drew remarks that it smells like Tucker “got buttfucked by a garbage compactor.” The best scene in the film is an interplay between Drew and stripper Lara (Marika Dominczyk), with each of them trying to one-up each other in a battle of insults. The second half of the film is more focused on physical comedy, which is where the narrative starts to come apart. In particular, the film’s re-creation of a particularly disgusting episode of “The Austin Road Trip” involving explosive diarrhea is unbelievably lame. Despite its flaws, the film is a fun and funny ride for both Tucker Max fans and newcomers, and is a faithful adaptation of the man’s work.
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell has been compared to The Hangover in terms of plot, characters, and style, and this comparison is reasonably accurate. In particular, Max’s movie has the same interplay of three male friends who occupy different spots in the alpha/beta/omega hierarchy of game. Tucker Max is the obvious alpha, a cocky, arrogant jackass who runs through women like a flu sufferer runs through tissues. Dan is a beta, an upstanding and generally honest fellow who cannot handle women, as shown by his inability to convince Kristy to allow him to go on the trip to the strip club, requiring Tucker to sweet-talk her down. Drew is a self-made omega who, after catching his girlfriend giving head to a white rapper, has retreated into a cocoon of video game addiction, nerdiness, and antisocial misogyny (telling one woman who sidles up to him at a bar that he will “carve a new fuckhole” in her if she doesn’t get away).
Satan is in the details, though, and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is considerably better than The Hangover in this regard. As I noted in my mini-review of The Hangover, the beta male character’s girlfriend is a complete and utter bitch who gleefully emasculates him and even cheats on him. In I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Kristy, while depicted as a bit of a killjoy, is an attractive and pleasant woman who is unfailingly loyal to Dan. The subplot of one of the main characters becoming romantically involved with a single mom stripper is reused, but instead of the beta male, it’s the omega Drew who becomes smitten with Lara after bonding with her during a game of Halo 3. Finally, while most sex comedies featuring alpha male player characters have said characters recanting their womanizing ways to settle down with a girl who is immune to their charms (The Pick-up Artist, Hitch, Sex Drive), it is revealed at the end that Tucker’s epic apology to Dan was based on a lie, meaning he’ll continue to be an asshole.
In this, Tucker Max’s movie, despite being a bit far-fetched, is both more honest and more pro-masculine than The Hangover, or any other entry in the sex comedy genre as of late. For more evidence of this, note the hollering hordes of feminists and manginas who came out to protest Max during the film’s premiere tour this past summer:
Johnson said the trailer contains sexist and racist phrases–phrases she says are intended to dehumanize and perpetuate a rape culture. Max’s book is filled mostly with stories of him and his exploits with women, some of which, according to Grimmett and Johnson, would be considered felonious acts under North Carolina law.
“He views women as objects,” Johnson said. “He’s only out to get as much sex as he can at any cost.”
The usual suspects among the misandrist class are also annoyed that Tucker Max serves as a role model for young men, as exemplified in this clueless editorial from College Candy:
With a book that was on New York Time’s bestselling list for three years in a row, and a movie out soon, clearly this dude has got a lotta funs. In fact, he’s becoming someone that guys look up to. Guys now have this notion that if you drink yourself to oblivion and get with every girl in sight (no matter what they look like and regardless of whether they are too drunk to function) then you’re “the man.” It’s like Tucker is the male Carrie Bradshaw… with a beyond vulgar twist. He’s inspiring guys from coast to coast to act like an ass and to do so without remorse.
I think it’s safe to say that Tucker Max is officially ruining men. And if we thought we were safe (because most guys don’t read books anyway) this movie is only going to make it worse.
The writer’s connection of Tucker Max to Sex and the City is surprisingly on point. I present Spengler’s Universal Law of Gender Parity:
In every corner of the world and in every epoch of history, the men and women of every culture deserve each other.
The counterpart of the narcissistic urban slut machine is the crass, vulgar, asshole player. As I wrote in my analysis of the George Sodini shootings:
In the past, men who played by the rules won out in the end. No more. Women of all types are spreading their legs exclusively for pick-up artists, cads, players, badboys, and other men whom a healthy society would regard as the scum of the earth. Men like George Sodini who succeed and contribute to society have only their right hands for company, while bottom-feeders are drowning in more vaj then they know what to do with.
You could stop this madness tomorrow by refusing to follow your vaginas straight into the arms of scumbags, and actually live up to your claims of wanting nice guys – but I doubt you will. You’ve made your bed, ladies – now sleep in it.
Tucker Max is a “bottom-feeder” in every sense of the word. In any sane culture, individuals like him would have been beaten into a life on the straight and narrow, or if they chose to remain scumbags, would forever live on the fringe of society and meet a violent, pathetic end. Max’s rise to fame was enabled by the hundreds of women who willingly slept with him, and his reputation has no doubt increased the number of women wanting a taste of his famous penis:
The author is now in the midst of a 31-city film tour, attracting sold-out crowds at every location, just as he does on college campuses across the country. And according to Max, his audiences are nearly always at least half female.
These women are not reluctant dates dragged there by men exacting revenge for being forced to sit through the “Sex and the City” movie. They are die-hard fans, willing to do almost anything to get their hero’s attention. For one fan at a recent stop in College Park, that meant using her mouth as a receptacle for a male audience member’s chewing tobacco. Another female fan sought out Max, slept with him, and then tattooed an explicit sentence commemorating the event just below her hip bone, thus earning the Holy Grail of any Maxite: an original Tucker Max blog entry featuring her.
The ladies love Tucker Max. I can confirm this: just under half of the audience in the theater where I saw I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell was female.
When it comes to sex, men will always follow the path of least resistance. If sex necessitates slapping a ring on your beloved’s finger, men will do it. If it necessitates having a decent job and a house of one’s own, men will have those things. When guys see women degrading themselves for a shot at sleeping with a self-absorbed asshole and then writing blog posts about his sexual prowess, they will become self-absorbed assholes. It’s really that simple.
As I wrote in my review of A Dead Bat in Paraguay, virtually every expression of masculinity has been crushed by the modern culture. One of the few that is acceptable is the amoral jackassery represented by Tucker Max. It’s unfortunate that a creature such as him is the most visible face of American manhood, but as one of the few positive icons for men today, his presence is necessary. Women wondering why young men look to him and others like him as role models will find their answers by looking in the mirror.
