THE HANGOVER Review

THE HANGOVER is testosterone uproarious! Non-stop laugh riot. A gut-busting, jaw-dropping comedy bound to be an instant classic. Your party’s nothing compared to these guys. You’re gonna remember the sight of… Zach, Cooper and Helms long after this movie ends. Director Todd Philips (Old School) is back, fully loaded and drinks are on the house.

Two days before his wedding, Doug and his three friends drive to Las Vegas for a blow-out bachelor party they’ll never forget. But, in fact, when the three groomsmen wake up the next morning, they can’t remember a thing. For some reason, they find a tiger in the bathroom and a six-month-old baby in the closet of their suite at Caesars Palace. The one thing they can’t find is Doug. With no clue as to what transpired and little time to spare, the trio must retrace their hazy steps and all their bad decisions in order to figure out where things went wrong and hopefully get Doug back to LA in time to walk down the aisle.

Unlike some comedy, THE HANGOVER doesn’t lose its hilarity halfway through the movie, the mystery of ‘Where’s Doug’ gets the audience hooked and it relies heavily on surprising us with unbelievable situations that they may or may not have encountered the night before. You just can’t wait to see all kinds of consequences that are gonna happen next because if their stupidity. The cameos from chicken, tiger to Mike Tyson are just as memorable as the vulgar dialogue.

I’m forever impressed at the fact that Caesar’s Palace opened their doors and let director Phillips and the crew basically did whatever the hell they wanted. Straight up access to just about anything and the result is nothing short than piss-your-pants funny, evident from the crazy images shown when the end credits roll. And if you think that they’ve shown the funny parts in the trailer and nothing left for the movie to offer, then better think again, my friend. Those of us who’ve partied way too much, gone f*ed up in the process can relate to this

I think what makes this movie works is the three unlikely friends, Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms) and Alan (Zach). You would think that by the time they get in each other’s throat, they’ll stop helping each other out but the story has a certain kindness to it, if you will, that you wouldn’t expect from a usual crude, raunchy comedy like this. You’re presented with these characters and you have an assumption of what and who they are but the movie’s saying you don’t know jack. Alan is a loner, a bit of a dumbass retard but he means well, he just doesn’t deliver his intentions the right way eventhough he wants to. Time and time again, he expresses, in a disturbing manner, how thankful he is for having friends like Phil and Stu.
Phil strikes you as the typical wild party a-hole, reckless and knows no bounds but he seems to be the one making sure they all don’t lose focus. When it seems like everybody and everything’s getting out of hand, he keeps telling the others to pull themselves together. Stu’s supposed to be the mature one out of the bunch but he panics a lot, it’s like a repressed anger or frustration that suddenly just explodes but it does help during his ultimate confrontation with the b*tch he calls girlfriend. The whole movie could’ve been nothing but three dumb a-holes trying to find his lost friend but what we got is a movie about two friends and one fat weirdo who wind up become three best friends after the whole crazy shenanigan’s all said and done.

It starts out just before we receive the answer and then the story goes straight to the beginning but the real trouble starts on the first day after, it’s like a f*ed up puzzle and you gotta trace it back in order to put the pieces together and solve it. Screenwriters John Lucas and Scott Moore plus Director Phillips give us enough combination of mess on the screen to entertain us and keep us asking what the f*ck is going on. It makes you follow each lead. One by one, things are slowly returning to where they belong as the story progresses. What’s smart about it is that the mystery of What’s Doug could be easily solved if we paid attention but it’s not easily predictable, that’s what’s fun about all this. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, even Heather Graham all have perfect comedic timing, I couldn’t picture anybody else playing their roles. This movie’s not for all ages, only for those of us old enough to live young. Here’s to Vegas!

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