The world needs more good comedy troupes. Not since the heyday of Monty Python has a stable group of talented comic performers consistently written, directed and starred in genuinely funny movies. Broken Lizard, a group of five guys whose third movie is Club Dread, are out to change that.
Quirky, funny troupes like the Kids in the Hall and the State have had mixed luck with films, but Broken Lizard, which has gone the unconventional route of not having its own sketch-comedy show first, had surprise film festival success with its first two films: 1996's Puddle Cruiser and 2001's Super Troopers. So they've got a bigger budget and a higher profile for Club Dread, a horror spoof which hits more often than it misses.
The troupe (Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske and Jay Chandrasekhar, who also directs) play staffers at Pleasure Island, a resort off the coast of Costa Rica, where nubile college students come to party over spring break. It's run by Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton), a washed-up island songster who's a dead-on parody of Jimmy Buffett. When staff members start turning up dead, it's clear there's a killer on the loose, and they have to keep the guests happy while trying to figure out whodunit.
The horror-movie plot is really just a loose structure to hang the jokes on, and most of them work fairly well. Chandrasekhar's overly proper British tennis instructor and Lemme's Latin lover stand out, as do Coconut Pete's awesome Buffett-inspired tunes. In keeping with the horror tradition, there are plenty of hot women showing plenty of skin, but it's all done in good fun and the humor is rarely tasteless or juvenile.
Paxton and Brittany Daniel, who brings the requisite femininity to the mostly male group, hold their own with the Lizard boys, and the pacing only flags in the last 15 minutes or so, when the Lizards seem to forget about comedy and focus on wrapping up the plot, which no one actually cares about. Broken Lizard may not yet be Monty Python, but Club Dread is funnier than Super Troopers, and another comedy from the troupe will be a welcome sight when it shows up.