DVD Review: Beer Wars

Robert W. Butler - Kansas City Star

Big Beer, Big Movies: Both Fall Flat

The other day I watched the new documentary "Beer Wars" because ... well, because it has the word "beer" in the title.

But Anat Baron's film (she was one of the founders of Boston Beer Co., makers of the Sam Adams line) ended up making me think about movies.

Bear with me. (I almost wrote "beer with me," but I retain a smidgen of self-respect.)

"Beer Wars" (you can pick up a DVD at www.beerwarsmovie.com) shows how, since the 1980s, microbreweries have sprouted up to challenge the brewing trinity of Budweiser, Miller and Coors. It's still a lopsided fight. All the microbrews make up far less than 10 percent of the suds served in this country.

But they've had enough impact on the market to worry the big three. Indie brews are growing in popularity, while the Bud, Miller and Coors brands are stuck in a holding pattern.

The reason is obvious. As one drinker tells the camera, whenever he's offered a beer from the big brewers, he asks that it be returned to the horse it came from.

Baron's theme is that once beer becomes a commodity rather than an art form, it loses its distinctive edge. For the film she conducted blind taste tests with devoted drinkers of Bud, Miller and Coors. Without the label in front of them, most couldn't tell one from the other.

The big boys have responded to drinkers' changing palates by churning out their own boutique brands - Budweiser Select, say, or Coors' Blue Moon and Killian's Irish Red labels.

The effect of this - and a central point of "Beer Wars" - is that more labels now compete for the same shelf space.

Shelf space is crucial because in terms of advertising dollars, Coors, Bud and Miller are blowing the little guys away. Small breweries can't afford national TV ads. They're happy with a few billboards.

As one brewer comments in the film, the Big Three aren't so much in the beer business as the advertising business.

The little guys have to hope beer drinkers will discover their suds in the grocery or liquor store.

But the proliferation of big-brew boutique labels and variety of packaging - Bud Light comes in cans, bottles, six-packs, 12-packs and 24-packs, all of which must be displayed on shelves and in coolers - tends to push the little brands right out of the store, or at least to the bottom of the cooler, far away from the eye-level view commanded by the heavy hitters.

So what has this got to do with movies?

Just this: Think of your typical Hollywood production as a can of big-label beer.

It's aimed at people who really don't care what they drink (remember, Bud fans couldn't distinguish their drink from the other guys'); moreover, it has been designed to appeal to the largest possible number of consumers, which means that any rough edges or surprises have been smoothed away.

Hollywood movies tend to be predictable because that's what the public has been taught to want.

Like, you thought Sandra Bullock wouldn't get the guy in that romantic comedy? And how teed off would you be if instead of a big bloody showdown, the villain in the thriller simply vanished and left the hero stewing in his own impotence?

Moreover, the big studio releases hit theaters with a barrage of TV advertising. When most of us buy a ticket, it's almost exclusively in response to a TV ad or trailer. Like the big brewers, Hollywood places more emphasis on the advertising than the product.

Meanwhile those daring souls who are actually trying to do something innovative with film can't find a screen, just like the microbrew that gets bumped from the liquor store cooler because Coors just introduced a 36-pack.

Granted, I see more movies than most and that may account for my having burned out early on the overworked Hollywood formulas.

Thank heavens for the occasional documentary, foreign film and American independent title. They keep me going.

Otherwise when faced with yet another cliched, overproduced, poorly thought out and terminally stupid movie, I might be tempted to send it back to the horse.

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