The Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong

Feature documentary directed by Dan Lindsay

Review By: Leslie Morton

              Beer pong- a simple drinking game where opposing players or teams set up ten plastic cups bowling pin fashion on opposite ends of a table.  The cups are filled slightly with a frosty brew, ping pong balls are distributed and the game begins.  If you’re opponent makes the ball into a cup, the cup is removed from the table and they are allowed to shoot until they miss.  You drink!  When they miss, it is your turn to hopefully annihilate and inebriate them.  A seemingly mindless game invented within the deep confines of a fraternity house- somewhere at Dartmouth to be exact, but in the fascinating documentary The Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong the stories and the passion are anything but simple and mindless.

              The first World Series of Beer Pong was organized by Billy Gaines and Duncan Carroll in 2006.  Eighty teams of two converged upon Mesquite, Nevada to be the best.  In the end, team France beat team Slippery Fetus in a close match up.  This documentary follows the series in 2007 where 246 teams of two competed to become the fable of the ping pong table.  The names of the teams are priceless: Saddam’s WMD’s, Josh’s Mom’s A Slut, Fuck You just to name a few.  The players are better.  The movie follows four young men who live, eat, breathe, sleep, and of course drink beer pong.  It’s no idle party game to any of them; it’s truly a way of life.  The differing competitors that they profile include characters that seem crafted from the mind of Christopher Guest or Judd Apatow, but they are REAL PEOPLE!  The overweight baseball loving nerd who just wants to be the best at something, the uber frat boy who got his degree but realized that he was better at beer pong than life, the team of two losers who do nothing but make fun of the other competitors not realizing that they are the biggest losers at the series!  It is comedic gold!  I felt as if I was watching a satire ala Broken Lizard or Ben Stiller but it’s a true documentary.  Films don’t get better than that to me.  By the end of the movie I completely understood beer pong, in thanks partly to the genius graphics utilized throughout the film, I cared who was going to win, and most importantly, I wanted to play myself!  This movie is a must see for beer pong enthusiasts nation wide.  You just might find yourself trying to follow the road to the World Series too. 

I give this film a five bourbons out of five…maybe I should give it five Pabst Blue Ribbons out of five instead.