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Club Dread
Fox Searchlight Pictures


6.0

based on 28 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 14 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for violence/gore, sexual content, language and drug use

Starring Elena Lyons, Dan Montgomery Jr., Tanja Reichert, Nat Faxon, Michael Weaver, Kevin Heffernan, Michael Yurchak, and Jordan Ladd

Surrounded by limber, wanton women on a booze-soaked island resort owned by rock star has-been Coconut Pete (Paxton), a non-stop party takes a turn for the weird when dead bodies start turning up faster than you could drink a rum punch. (Fox)

GENRE(S):	Comedy \| Horror \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Jay Chandrasekhar Kevin Heffernan Steve Lemme Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske
DIRECTED BY:	Jay Chandrasekhar
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 25, 2004 Video: May 25, 2004 Theatrical: February 27, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	97 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Premiere Glenn Kenny

The Broken Lizard guys don't so much send up a genre as inhabit it, and subvert it from the inside.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

With "Super Troopers" and Club Dread, Broken Lizard has cranked out two genuinely funny movies in a row.

Village Voice Ben Kenigsberg

The group has a distinctive deadpan style; after you get on their wavelength, it's impossible to quit chuckling.

Film Threat Kevin Carr

Broken Lizard manages to poke fun at the genre without falling into the trap of recycling old Scooby-Doo jokes.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Pure dumb fun -- horror slapstick that rudely parodies both the arterial violence of slasher films and the topless hedonism of the spring-break ritual.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

This genre-busting hybrid is a scattershot affair - bad jokes land with a thud that seems to echo, but the winning ones prompt hearty laughs.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Works better than one might think, thanks to the group's modus operandi, which combines a fundamental reverence for the target material and a sly irreverence that's key to their skewering technique.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As bad-taste comedies go, this is more clever than gross.

Empire Danny Graydon

Club Dread still thrives on the group's enormous charm and the determined, genuinely funny comedic approach of knowing pop-culture winks and a zaniness that marks them as pleasingly Pythonesque.

Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown

A few gags are brilliantly staged, but most have a smug, collegiate take-it-or-leave-it quality that makes full-on belly laughter feel optional.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

A splatter of scenes that relocate the funny-bone in the lower anatomical regions -- sometimes hitting the mark, occasionally a glancing blow, often missing completely.

Washington Post Sara Gebhardt

Of course, the film still may be too bloody and crass for some, and it's by no means hilarious, but all things considered, Club Dread lives up to expectations, which were never really that high to begin with.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

It is really gory, for the record -– though it's too silly and insufficiently twisted to slake the appetite of the hardcore gorehound, it's not something to take a kid to.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

The film's biggest flaw is its excessive running time: The jokes start wearing thin after the first hour and, by the time the credits finally roll, it's become the kind of straightforward gorefest it started out ridiculing.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

The Broken Lizard types bring the best out of Paxton, only to abandon him in the second half and focus on themselves. A bit more humility might have served them in better stead.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

If you enjoy gross humor -- elevated by an occasional witty line -- and looking at babes, and don't mind a little blood and gore, do I have a date movie for you.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The new parody from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, takes another swipe at the corpse armed with the same old weapons. This time, rigor mortis has set in.

The New York Times Dave Kehr

Mr. Chandrasekhar's direction is casual to the point of carelessness, but he does give the movie a friendly, convivial atmosphere that contradicts and sometimes overcomes its frequently cruel humor. In short, this is another film that looks as if it was more fun to make than it is to sit through.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

The upside is that they're likable and play well together...The downside is that they're all still communicating roughly the same message, which lies somewhere between a wink and a nudge.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A slasher spoof of sorts, except that unlike the "Scream" pics, scant effort seems to have gone into the spoofing aspect of the story.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The name is a tipoff: Club Dread is dreadful.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A bumptious splatter farce that manages to improve from awful to moderately engaging as its cast is winnowed down to the five guys themselves.

Variety Joe Leydon

A stunningly unfunny farce that makes the worst of a stale concept.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

About as funny as malaria.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Pretty dreadful.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Chandrasekhar is a master forger of images and situations from horror movies past, but unlike Wes Craven did in "Scream," he doesn't build on them in any way, and the result is the opposite of what's intended; the movie is stultifying.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Studios can release movies even more insultingly dumb, crudely assembled and cheaply produced than this one, though such an achievement will require some effort.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Michael C. gave it a 3:
What the f..k happened here!?!? I loved 'Super Troopers' when it came out! I mean I really loved it! I was waiting for a comedy like that one for a long time. So you can imagine my shock when seeing this one! It's pretty pathetic when you get not even 5 minutes of laughs for a 97 minute movie. As much as I hate it when people say stuff like this...Broken Lizard, go make Super Troopers 2 or something.

Mark B. gave it a 2:
Broken Lizard seems to specialize in making uncalled-for parodies of moribund 1980s movie genres that aren't exactly aching for callbacks. Super Troopers was a fitfully funny, successfully stupid pothead gloss on the Police Academy movie series. This one, however, fails on just about every level. Not only have Wes Craven, the Wayans brothers and David Zucker pretty much squeezed every drop of blood out of the slasher-spoof concept, but Club Dread commits the unforgivable sin of movie parody: it eventually becomes the exact same thing it's satirizing! To add insult to injury, the brilliant 1950s bad-sci-fi spoof The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which almost completely reinvents the movie-parody genre and was released at virtually the same time, makes this mess look even more like a total failure than it already is. I guess Broken Lizard can go for lambada movies as their next target.

Tony B. gave it an 8:
Lot's of good fun. I was laughing quite a buit. same type of humor as Super Troopers. Not as funny, but same style. It's actually got a good bit of scare in it too...nothing real serious, but you'll jump every now and again.

E D gave it a 4:
Severely disappointing. I can best compare this to Brooks' "Dracula: Dead and Loving It"- both films spent so much time telling the story, they forgot to make it funny. Don't get me wrong, this films does have its moments (the hedge maze, for instance, is one of the funnier gags I've witnessed), but not nearly enough to warrent an hour and a half of my time. Those looking for the chemistry between characters that made Super Troopers such a joy will have to dig deep and still come up empty. Untimately, the film as a parody to slasher pics pays a tribute to the genre more effectively than it intended- it is as tedious as any Friday the 13th sequel and just as boring.

D. C. gave it a 3:
Most of the time the jokes just aren't that funny. also, it's more of a horror film than the marketing lead me to believe.

Cameron S. gave it a 7:
A gross, gratuitous, schlocky juvenile romp of fun time. Broken Lizard's Club Dread places us at a campy island resort filled with laughs and violence. The movie is filled with tons of blood and boobs. Most guys that are easily unoffended will probably have a fun time. Taking the material too serious will make it a poor time. What you need to do is chill out to the tunes of Pina Coladaberg.

Chan B. gave it a 10:
So FUNNYY. This and Super Troopers are my top 2 movies.

Club Dread Fox Searchlight Pictures

Club Dread
Fox Searchlight Pictures