Friday, June 5, 2009 , Updated
Movie review: The Hangover
The Hangover, the new comedy from director Todd Phillips (Old School), is all about the potential. It had the potential to elevate its stars from sidekicks to leading men. It had the potential to allow Phillips entry into the top echelon of comedy directors. It had potential to mine the Las Vegas setting for new and different storylines. And, most importantly, it had the potential to be the funniest movie of the summer.
In case the past tense didn't tip you off, The Hangover fails to live up to that potential on almost every level. In the never-ending quest of R-rated comedies to one-up each other in terms of outrageous behavior, this film falls short because it had, yes, the potential to top them all in terms of crazy behavior and somehow manages to play it relatively safe. It's not that it's not a funny movie; it just never reaches the high points of hilarity that define many of its brethren.
The Hangover is all about your classic road trip to Vegas for a bachelor party. In hindsight, this should have been the first sign that the film would be average. Doug (Justin Bartha) is set to be married in two days, and his two best friends, Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms), and future brother-in-law, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) take the reins to show him one last good time as a single man. The night starts at Caesar's Palace ... and that's about the last any of them remember, as a night of partying leaves Phil, Stu, and Alan dazed and confused, and missing one key thing: Doug.
It's never a good thing to wake up with a chicken in your face.
The rest of the film is spent with the trio trying to piece together a night they have no memories of, which sounds good in theory, but in practice is hit-and-miss. While the film throws a few innovative things out there, much of the film consists of your standard clichés that have been served up in virtually every Vegas comedy known to man. Drunken rampage? Check, obviously. Running into Vegas celebrities? Check. Person inordinately good at gambling? Check. Marriage to a stripper while drunk? Check.
Even the things they get right fall a bit flat. The group finds a random baby in their suite and the incongruity of it with the situation they're in is very funny...until they discover where the baby actually came from, at which point the baby disappears from the film completely. It's one thing to not run a joke into the ground, but a similar negative effect is felt when you jettison comedy gold too early. The film also uses male nudity time and again to gain laughs, which would be fresh if a slew of other R-rated comedies (like Borat and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) hadn't used the same tack recently.
The baby showing off its massive comedy skills.
Perhaps the reason none of the above works, though, is because the three main members of the cast (Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis) have close to zero compatibility. Phil is a jerk who's hard to root for and Alan (hewing close to Galifianakis' normal comedy persona) is just plain awkward. Stu is the only character that seems to go through some kind of transformation, but by the end of the film, you just wonder how he got to be friends with these guys in the first place.
The Hangover will have you smiling and chuckling throughout, but for a film that should have elicited uproarious laughter, smiles and chuckles just don't cut it.
