The Hangover (2009)

Director: Todd Philips Stars: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham

Review:

"After Hangover (2009), everybody is trying to copy the formular." Apparent even the movie plagiarizes itself with its sequel, which have been criticised of being basically the same movie. So why not see the first one instead?

Four friends, Doug, Phil, Stu and Alan went to Las Vegas for a bachelor party to celebrate Doug, who is getting married two days later. They went up on the roof of Caesar Palace, and took vow to forget everything that happen in that night. The next shot we see them lying unconsciencely in a trashed hotel suite, with the gloom missing. There is a tiger in the bathroom, an infant baby in the lock, and Stu lost a teeth. "Where happened last night and What the fuck is Doug?"

Someone said it is hilarious but that was not me. The problem with the jokes is that you could have guessed it like several seconds before. Soon Father-in-law very specifically told Doug to take good care of the car, and you know later in the movie it would get tossed. Alan, who have some mental problems I presume, asked the reception girl "This is not the real Caesar Palace is this?" You know that must be stupid, specially coming from a character that is established to be stupid, and you know the joke already. Later on some chinese gangmembers showed up and told them to give him 80 grands in exchange for Doug. A guy was lying in the back seat with his face covered. Misunderstanding gag. Got it.

Although there does exist a few scenes that had me laughed. When they took a toast on the roof, Alan gave a speech about their friendship and cut his hand with a knife. "Blood brothers". That is really out of place and really funny. 

I was hoping a story would be pieced together, since we see Phil try to connect all the pieces of information together, writing down what happened at what time. Unfortunately however, all the pieces were incoherent and independent. There was a tiger in the bathroom because they stole it from Mike Tyson. Stu lost a teeth because Phil bet he is not a good enough dentist to pull out his own tooth. There was naked chinese man in the trunk because Phil won money with him and thought he was his lucky charm. Ok that is funny I'll give to that.

The characters are also pretty shallow. Alan is sort of a comic relief, Phil does not have much interesting to say or do, and Doug disappeared most of the time. The trip to find out the explaination of the situation is a comedic routines but not something that develops the characters. Except Stu though. Before this trip he was in relationship with a really mean dominatrix. During the black out he married a stripper, and found that actually the stripper is a much better girl, and decided to broke up with his girlfriend and date the stripper. I like how understandable the stripper is to a point that is sympathising, that it is Las Vegas and their wedding was just stupid, and Stu just could not treated the wedding as if it never happened. I was going to use the word "battling", but actually there is no battle. Who would want his original girlfriend even without the stripper anyway.

The Hangover was highly successful commercially and critically, but I did not watch it when it first came out nor have a high expectation, since I usually do not find American comedies all that funny. I am not someone that always demand inner meanings, implications or artistic values, and I do enjoy movies like Scary movie (2000), but this is just not such hilarious and I did not laugh that whole many times.