The Hangover Review
A study of the contemporary American male’s immature nature and innate thirst for debauchery can make some of the most fun you’ll experience in a movie theater, if it’s done right. The Hangover does it right.
Vegas makes a fun playground for the superb cast, who sync together nicely. The script is formulaic and somewhat predictable, but it flows smoothly and connects in all the right places. This movie doesn’t need intricate plot to be good: it’s a silly bromance about guys struggling their way through the consequences of an excessive blow-out night in Vegas. The humor is vulgar, politically incorrect, and the laughter is non-stop. There are chickens, tigers, and an angry effeminate Asian man, oh my!
The premise is a bachelor party that goes awry when the hungover partyers wake up not remembering anything from the night before. It was supposed to be a night full of memories that the groom Doug (Justin Bartha), his friends Phil (Bradly Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms), and brother-in-law-to-be Alan (Zach Galifianakis), could cling to forever when they returned to the boring grind of their everyday lives – a glorious reprieve from the world of women and responsibilities. But, instead of joyously riding home with a headache and the sweet promise that Vegas will keep their secrets, they are panicked and stuck there for another night because too much may be staying in Vegas, namely Doug.
Doug is a sparkling young man who’s conventionally handsome, successful and is about to marry into money. Basically his life is set, and since that kind of happiness is as interesting as burnt toast, it’s a good thing that he’s missing for most of the film. His unshakable normalcy would have gotten in the way of the marvelous brotherhood of anxiety and neurosis the other three formed in their panicked and slap-stick pursuit of him. The trio of men end up on a chase to solve the riddle of last night a la Dude, Where’s My Car except smarter and funnier. Zach Galifianakis’ Alan is a special brand of crazy who often steals the moment with his non sequiturs and piercingly uninhibited heart-felt comments. His presence lends the entire movie an unexpected emotional depth as he openly and awkwardly works his way through his feelings and the other men struggle with accepting and interacting with him.
Ed Helm’s plays Stu, an only slightly altered version of his character Andy from The Office. Stu is an uptight, pastel-polo-shirt-wearing fiancé of a humorless, hypocritical ballbuster. He’s is an extremely restrained dentist who ends up with a missing tooth that fateful morning, and later finds out he was the wildest one of the bunch. It’s always fun to watch Ed Helms unravel, and he doesn’t disappoint here.
Phil, played by Bradly Cooper, is the cool-guy asshole who didn’t end up with the bad-ass lifestyle he might of dreamed of. He’s bored with his teaching job and the obligations associated with his wife and kid. Unlike Stu, who has some real reasons to be miserable, Phil just seems frustrated that he couldn’t turn his mischievous good looks and leadership skills into a glamorous life. He’s the rock-star of the group, more laid back than Phil, rougher around the edges than Doug,with a controlled kind of crazy to match Alan’s unrestrained madman. Phil is able to shine here as he pushes the other two to do what needs to be done to find Doug. By the end Alan has idolized him to the point of imitating his every action and Phil seems more flattered than annoyed.
Right now people are swarming to see the Hangover, directed by Todd Phillips and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, which as I write this, has overtaken the mighty Pixar film Up at the box office for the #1 spot. In a sea of high-bugdet films (Like the $100 million dud Land of the Lost, which critics are using as a punching bag to hone their snark skills) that have little to offer besides impressive special effects, the Hangover is a movie that won’t insult their intelligence and will keep them laughing from start to finish. That’s something we could all use right now.