A sketch about beer goggles? Not the most original joke. “Oh,” I thought “it’s probably some ironic play on the old trope about being too drunk to see people’s true qualities. Something not at all about inebriation. Something awesome.”
And I was wrong. It wasn’t ironic. Nope. It was pretty much just a straight-up take on the alcohol-induced phenomenon we all know and dread. Still, I found myself…laughing.
The short, written by Lauren Cook and Anna Breslaw, directed by Oren Brimer (The Daily Show), and starring veteran funnyman Kurt Braunohler alongside Scott Eckert, Anna Breslaw, and Lauren Cook, demonstrates that good acting and writing matters a hell of a lot more than an original idea. Just look at Girls (a show about four friends living in New York and talking about it) or Swingers (a movie about two guys living in Los Angeles and talking about it).
Beer Goggles yet again lends credence to the idea that, as writers/creators/pitchers/viewers, we should abandon our reliance on loglines and let the frequency of our laughter gauge what’s worthwhile. So abandon your prejudices about that college roommate who made constant reference to the chick he never would’ve banged if he “didn’t have such thick fucking beer goggles on” and let me know how many times you chuckled at this vid, okay? OKAY?!
Good.
Here are three reasons to watch.
In comedy, there’s just nothing like an arrogant prick. Almost all variations work. The two presented here certainly do. Braunholer and Eckert do a five-star job of ensuring that phenomenon remains ever-present.
Until the end of the sketch, the girls are the reckless ones judging would-be sexual partners that, without the booze effect, wouldn’t ever make the cut. It’s a nice little inversion of the usual goggles reference and lends some subtle originality to the whole piece.
The guy-girl role reversal is key. Bringing to light girls’ deep-seeded, intricate hopes for what they might find in a potential mate is infinitely more watchable than listening to two bros talk about chicks’ asses. Cook and Breslaw recognized that and delivered.
