“Broken Lizard’s Club Dread” (Fox Searchlight)
Broken Lizard is the comedy troop that gave the world “Super Troopers,” a fairly interesting comedy that was a bigger success than anyone expected. Now they are back with a second film, “Club Dread,” and all you have to do is add “ful” to the title to get the essence of this review.
The movie is set on Paradise Island, a Club Med type playground for nubile young women and lecherous young men. The whole thing is run by a semi-famous singer named Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton).
When the new masseur Lars (Kevin Heffernan) arrives, he is welcomed by the new aerobics instructor Jenny (Brittany Daniel). He also meets Putman (Jay Chandrasekhar) who is the tennis instructor, Sam (Erik Stolhanske) who is in charge of security, Juan (Steve Lemme) who is the diving instructor, and Dave (Paul Soter) who is Pete’s nephew.
As soon as Lars arrives, staff members start dying. Pete doesn’t want to let the guests know because that would be bad for business. Plus there are no boats to get the folks off the island and the radios and phones have been destroyed.
People keep getting killed so the film is yo-yoed between horror and humor, and neither is interesting, amusing or entertaining. Plus it all seems to go on forever. Every time you think you have reached the end, something or somebody pops up and drags it out for another sequence.
Bill Paxton will have a hard time living this fiasco down. He is on view just to utter profanities and ridicule the fame of Jimmy Buffett. Of all the other cast members only Brittany Daniel stands out. She is funny in a Jenna Elfman sort of way, and she looks great.
The movie is rated R for profanity, violence and nudity.
“Club Dread” is just awful. There is no other way to say it. Stay at home and save your money. Don’t even rent this one when it comes out on video.
I scored “Club Dread” a dreadful 2 out of 10.
