The Hangover

(2009)

Directed by

Todd Phillips

Review by Todd Plucknett

The Hangover is a movie that I was not looking forward to…at all. I thought the trailer looked really stupid and juvenile, but when the reviews came out, I was mildly encouraged. I still thought it looked terrible, but I was able to imagine how the movie could muster up some sort of decency. Sadly, it was as I originally suspected. I should have gone with my gut.

The movie is a typical Vegas comedy. Doug (Justin Bartha, of National Treasure) is getting married. The film starts out with a phone call from his friend Phil (Bradley Cooper) to Doug’s wife, saying that they lost Doug, and they have no idea how, where, or when. This takes place chronologically near the end of the movie, so we get to find out exactly how they got to that point. It turns out that the bachelor party was in Las Vegas, and due to a drug dealing mix-up at a liquor store, Alan (Zach Galifianakis), one of Doug’s best buds, accidentally drugged the whole group with Ruffies, the date rape drug. So Phil, Alan, and Stu (the hilarious Ed Helms) set out to find out what happened the night before. This includes stealing a tiger from Mike Tyson, a wedding with a prostitute/stripper named Jade (Heather Graham), and a stolen cop car. I wish I could have seen any part of that, but sadly, we only get the dissatisfying day after hangover, with a few photos in the end.

I believe that the movie’s problems start and end with Todd Phillips. I am not a fan of this director. Every one of his films gets some hype, and none of them live up to it. Old School was ok, I guess. Starsky and Hutch was decent. Road Trip was mindless fun, but still too silly to call “good”. Then came The Hangover, which had the potential to be a pretty good film with heart, but ended up just being another party comedy to add to the scrapbook. There are some funny parts, no question about that. The beginning third was actually a very slick and consistently amusing puzzle. Sadly, when Mike Tyson showed up, it took a turn for the worst. It had nothing to do with Tyson, who was arguably the funniest part of the film. It was the tiger that started it. From the moment totally ripped out of Tommy Boy and countless other movies on, there are rarely laughs to be had, and the last half of the movie is agonizingly predictable, shallow, and just plain stupid.

The actors do a good job here. Justin Bartha is very funny, except for the fact that he is only in maybe 25 minutes total. Bradley Cooper is good in his part, but it could have been played by almost any slick-looking actor in Hollywood. Ed Helms steals the movie. Heather Graham is always great to see, but her character was underused and underdeveloped. Zach Gilifianakis, with the exception of a cool Rain Man part, almost single-handedly ruins the movie with his tired dumbass routine that is in every movie. Ken Jeong, who peaked with Knocked Up, is simply irritating and ruins every scene he is in.

The real problem with this movie is that it had no idea what it wanted to be. It is a smart comedy for a little while, but then it turns sour when it starts to get just silly. Every moment in the second half of the movie is borrowed from somewhere else. I saw quite a bit of Pineapple Express in the movie, which is a movie with similar flaws, but which had already established that sort of feel prior to unleashing the dumb comedy all over the second half. The Hangover struggles with its identity. It could have been treated as a smooth comedy, like the first part. It could have been an all out raunchy bash, like the night we don’t get to see probably was. Or it could have been a stupid attempt at humor, like the second half. Any of those would have been fine, if it had stuck with it throughout, accomplishing some sort of a guilty pleasure at least. It tries to combine all three, and it fails miserably. It is like Step Brothers meets Old School meets Dude, Where’s My Car?. If any of those appealed to you, then definitely check out this movie. You will love it.

Overall, the movie is just frustrating. When a gang crashes into the stolen cop car that they are driving and tries to kill them in front of the wedding chapel and shoots a guy with no repercussions, I shook my head and thought, “Come on, you don’t need to go there.” Then they went there, over and over again. I suppose I can call it a semi-fun experience that never seems real. There is not a shred of originality or realism in the entire movie, expect for maybe the first 15 minutes, when the anticipation and possibilities were still in front of the film. Then it reduces itself to stupid gags, lame dialogue, annoying characters, and events as ridiculous as the Elvis impersonators sky-diving in Honeymoon in Vegas, but nowhere near as funny. The end credits show the photos that put everything that we didn’t see in perspective, and it probably brought as much surprise and smiles than the previous 90 minutes combined. I know that there are many people that will love this and hail it as the next in line of the sex comedy genre that Apatow has redefined. But really, this is as dim-witted as any movie, but it thinks that it is smart. That’s a bad combination.

Rating: