The timing for comedy team Broken Lizard's new movie, Club Dread, couldn't be more perfect. Opening their film the same week as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, the guys behind cult classic Super Troopers offer up a film that's the very antithesis of Gibson's somber, graphic masterpiece. It's a raucous semi-spoof that, pardon the pun, takes its own stab at doing a riff on the '80s summer camp slashers.

But, alas, while Broken Lizard members Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske are a talented bunch who will go places in the world of comedy, Club Dread ends up making me wonder why they didn't sneak into a sold-out Passion screening instead. Super Troopers was a good-hearted, amusing comedy -- even though it had too many dry spots between the big laughs. Club Dread follows suit, only those dry stretches are longer, and it includes fewer really funny parts. That's why I recommend this flick for fast-forward viewing on video rather than for watching at the multiplex.

Club Dread takes place on Pleasure Island, a resort owned by laid-back and washed-up songster Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton). The drinks never stop flowing, and life is one huge party here. Among the staff are tennis pro Putman (Chandrasekhar), fun policeman Sam (Stolhanske), dive master Juan (Lemme), DJ Dave (Soter), new masseur Lars (Heffernan), and aerobics instructor Jenny (Brittany Daniel), all charged with keeping the guests in a constant drunken haze. But after the latest crop of partygoers arrives on Pleasure Island, a masked killer starts on a bloody rampage, slashing away select staff members one by one. As the Jason Voorhees wannabe starts offing victim after victim, surviving staff members attempt to use one of Coconut Pete's old songs to pin down who else might be targeted and uncover the killer's identity, all the while trying not to let word of the slasher get out and cause panic amongst the boozed-up vacationers.

Although Club Dread adopts a mellow, easygoing sense of humor,  it's perhaps a little too laid-back. Still, for the most part, the movie is a healthy blending of horror and comedy -- a spoof of the slasher genre that puts aside a little time to take itself seriously. Broken Lizard has a great time devising spontaneous bursts of originality, (loved the live Pac-Man game, with scantily-clad women taking the place of the ghosts), some nice parodies of slasher flicks (such as when the killer calmly catches up to a victim trying to escape on a golf cart), and a general camaraderie among the cast members. Club Dread must have been great fun to make, but the film itself is something of a disappointment. However, I did enjoy a few terrific running gags, including how Jenny's slept with everyone on the island except Putman and how every character is given some sort of weird motive for being the slasher.

The Broken Lizard guys mostly play the opposites of their characters from Super Troopers.  Most notable are Chandrasekhar (also Club Dread's director), who goes from a cop with an elusive ethnicity to a dry and snooty tennis pro, and Heffernan, transforming from loudmouthed officer Farva to sensitive, new-age masseur Lars, but all of the guys (not to mention the addition of the lovely Brittany Daniel) take turns enjoying their own chunks of this two-hour party. And just as Brian Cox was brought along for the ride in Super Troopers,  another established actor, Bill Paxton, joins in the Broken Lizard fun. Paxton crafts a memorable comedic performance in the role of Coconut Pete, a beach bum who's still ticked at the success of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" over his own song, "Pina Coladaburg."

In certain segments, Club Dread is one of the year's funniest comedies; as a whole, it's a bit dull, longwinded, and occasionally pointless. 

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by 20th Century Fox and rated "R' for violence/gore, sexual content, language and drug use.)

Review also posted at www.ajhakari.com.