Club Dread film review

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CLUB DREAD

Take one part Porkys 3: The Revenge, add in a little Halloween III: Season of the Witch as well as a dollop of something more contemporary such as Urban Legend 2: Final Cut. Then remove all traces of humour, wit, horror and intelligence and you should have concocted a mix as unsavoury as Club Dread, the new film by American comedy troupe Broken Lizard.

After showing considerable promise with their last film Super Troopers, which had an endearing silliness, amusing characters and several laugh out loud moments, their follow-up effort shows all the signs of going Hollywood, and sacrificing any basic idea of what is funny for jokes so pitiful that it's astonishing anybody could have read the script and cracked any form of smile.

If you've had the misfortune of seeing any of the satellite TV programmes about American college spring breaks - or even the film The Real Cancun - then you'll know the basic set-up for Club Dread. Hundreds of loud American students come to an idyllic Costa Rican paradise owned by Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton, who has to have a serious word with his agent), to find it run by a 'wacky' crew including a South American desperate to hide the fact that he was jailed for having sex with a goat, a pretentious English tennis coach (at least I think he was supposed to be English, as he offers the worst fake accent in recent memory), a sensitive masseur, and a drug-dealing dj.

One by one the group leaders get chopped up by a mysterious character who lives in the jungle (or does he?), but the execution of it all is so half-baked that the only people really losing the will to live are the poor audience. Imagine a spoof of Hi-De-Hi and The Evil Dead done very badly and you get the idea. Actually, that would probably be a more enjoyable experience.

With direction as feeble as its jokes, Club Dread is no laughing matter, and there must be some contractual reason why the film is being released outside of the United States. It outstays its welcome enormously, with finale after finale that are meant, presumably, to make us laugh as the cleverness of all involved at spoofing what were admittedly not-great-but-fun films such as Friday the 13th. The trouble is that most people would rather watch a triple bill of the worst Friday the 13th films than have to sit through Club Dreadful again.