Puddle Cruiser (Jay Chandrasekhar, 1996)

I couldn't stay away for long, I guess. I've found a little time while in Minnesota to update about a movie I watched the night before I left, Broken Lizard's Puddle Cruiser. Now that I've seen it, I've seen all the major Broken Lizard movies, hooray! This one, their first movie, made for $250,000 in 1996, is sweeter and gentler in nature than their subsequent films, but still shows flashes of their trademark humor that would find its way into center stage. The plot resembles something that might have been on Undeclared; Felix falls for an overachieving fellow student with a boyfriend (his name is Traci Shannon, which leads to some great jokes in the movie). That's the basic plot, with several subplots that fill out the movie and make the characters more than one-dimensional college boys. Except the ones that are one-dimensional college boys. The five Broken Lizard guys are in the beginning stages of their comedy, and you can see where they're going in their gags, some of which are repeated in their following films. Again, not much I can say about this, analysis-wise, but I whole-heartedly recommend it for people who have seen and enjoyed other Broken Lizard films. I wouldn't make it your first of their films, because it's not very representative of their comedy style, but it's a good, if a bit slight, romantic comedy with a decidely goofy edge. 6/10

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