[4/18 Update: Another review that I enjoyed reading, this one also from an industry veteran, All About Beer’s Daniel Bradford.]

Hard to believe that word first spread about this movie less than two months ago. When I wrote my initial post about Beer Wars, I was hoping that this would be craft beer’s ’15 minutes’ in the national spotlight. Unfortunately, it trended on Twitter for a little while but that was about it.

It obviously got a lot of play on the beer sites today between forums and blogs. Indications were that reviews were mixed. Based on the nature of the promotions leading up to the film, this doesn’t surprise me too much. I just don’t think beer people learned much from the film that they didn’t already know. Beer people seemed to be the target audience though, based on the promotions, I felt like BMC drinkers would benefit more. My main concern is that not too many BMC-drinking folks went to see this which would be a major lost opportunity. But maybe some did . . . I particularly liked seeing greendmind0428’s tweet: “Having the 2008 World Beer Cup award winning stout – Terminal Stout at Rock Bottom. I was inspired by Beer Wars for sure.”

I am ashamed to admit that I was unable to see the movie due to work commitments but I still got my review fix at a number of places:

There have been over 1,400 Beer Wars tweets on Twitter in the last 36 hours.

Over twenty threads about the movie popped up at Beer Advocate though discussion has now been limited to two big threads. Part 1, Part 2. There is a little chatter at RateBeer as well.

There are at least a couple hundred blog mentions (movie reviews) from the last couple days.

Here are a few lines from bloggers:

US News and World Reports: “I went to see ‘Beer Wars’ as someone who already knows a lot about the beer industry. My sense is that the audience, both in my theater and at the live event, was in a similar position. Baron is essentially preaching to the converted.”

BeerScribe: “Without question, the strongest parts of the film involved Rhonda Kallman, co-founder of the Boston Beer Company and the New Century Brewing Company. The scenes with her family were worth the price of admission and watching her personal struggles on screen provided the basis for a strong documentary voice.”

Draft Mag (Ray Daniels): “The best “gotcha” of the panel discussion was when they played an out-take of Todd Alstrom slamming her “Moonshot” while he and Kahlman sat no more than four feet apart on the stage.”

Looking forward to catching this on DVD so that I can make my own judgments . . .