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Dreadful
Broken Lizard fails miserably in their second attempt at making us laugh.

Starring: Erik Stolhanske, Paul Soter, Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Bill Paxton, Jordan Ladd, Samm Levine
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar

Reviewed by Kevin Cunningham

THE PITCH: A serial killer terrorizes a group of silly club workers on an isolated club paradise. IN OTHER WORDS: Scream meets Gilligan's Island, but with the humor of a recent Saturday Night Live movie.

It's easy to see what the makers of Club Dread were trying to do. Spoof a stupid horror film.

The problem is, the genre of horror has turned into spoofing itself already. And they do it much better. Suddenly, Club Dread is one of the more serious horror films in a while, and that is just boring.

The gang at Broken Lizard, the makers of this film and the very funny Super Troopers, simply aren't funny this time around. All the tools are there for funny random stuff like in Super Troopers, but for some reason, all the jokes fall flat. It all is exemplified by Jay Chandrasekhar, who directs but also stars as the Indian tennis pro with a British accent and Jamaican dreads. It's supposed to be funny. You know it is. But it's not.

Of course, then you've got the big fat masseuse as the humorous anti-hero. The blonde girl who's slept with just about everyone. The Latin cabana boy with far too much sexual charm. They're all supposed to be funny. But they aren't . They're just stereotypes, and they aren't even particularly good ones. They're standard, blasé and quite boring. No one tries to do anything extreme to get laughs. That's not good at all.

Instead, this group of comedians are outdone by Bill Paxton, playing the wild-eyed club owner, with a wig that looks like a 20 year old Rapunzel wig from the local costume shop topped off with the cap from the Skipper of Gilligan's Island. He dives into the part with energy, but about halfway through the film, he looks just about as bored as the average viewer.

The only other bright spot is Jordan Ladd, daughter of Cheryl Ladd, playing the creepy little chick. She is bright eyed and truly funny in almost all of her spots until her dark secret comes out. At that point, she becomes as stock as the rest of the characters in the movie. Oh well, at least she's topless when her secret comes out. She does, however, seem to be channeling her mother, and might make all the Gen-Xers see what our parents saw in Cheryl back in the '70's.

It's too bad, because this movie drags right into the final moments of exposition, and even then, with one last chance for this script to break out of it's very normal doldrums, it fumbles the chance to be silly, wacky and unpredictable. But no, the motives for the killer are as stupid, predictable and unsubtly hidden as any.

The DVD's only real attribute is for guys to be able to watch the naked parts over and over again. The makers of the DVD seem to have put as little effort into the DVD as the movie itself, with only a couple of commentaries to pass for 'Special Features.' All in all, a sad effort by what had been a promising group of funny people.

Rating	Film:(1out of 4 stars)
	Extras: (0 out of 4 stars)
	Overall: (1out of 4 stars)

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