Review #991: 'The Hangover Part III' (2013)

Some film-makers form a trilogy to tell a tale, finding it a unique way to fashion a story and give the beginning, middle and end enough time and breathing space to flesh out on their own, forming stand-alone pieces that work just as well on their own in the process. Others, like The Hangover helmer Todd Phillips, use it to squeeze every drop of money out of a proven formula and fool an audience into thinking that, given the success of a previous instalment, they're in for a guaranteed good time. Only The Hangover Part II was terrible, and Part III is even worse, to the point where the franchise is barely recognisable from the hilarious and charming surprise it was back in 2009.

Ditching the formula that saw our three bumbling heroes wake up from a particularly heavy night in a variety of terrible states to find that one of their part is missing and no memory of what went down, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are instead roped into a plot involving an escaped-from-prison Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) and the gangster looking for him, Marshall (John Goodman). But also ditched is any sense of humour or even any actual jokes, and in its place comes cruelty and distastefulness. Opening with Alan towing a giraffe home on the back of a trailer, events take an expected unfunny turn as the animal is decapitated and Alan is convinced that he needs help. It's on their way to rehab that they find themselves confronted by Marshall and Black Doug (Mike Epps), the latter returning from the first film.

Conveniently brushing Doug (Justin Bartha) out of the way again as Marshall holds him captive so the threesome can try and generate some laughs, The Hangover Part III becomes a pedestrian bore; a series of set-pieces that quickly run out of steam. In an attempt to make up for the clear lack of inspiration, Chow's role has been beefed up even more, but Jeong's hyperactive and excruciatingly annoying shtick gets old very quickly. A scene near the end sees Chow parachuting through Las Vegas screaming obscenities, and I was left scratching my head at just how the sleeper-hit of 2009 ended up at this point. When there's a rare chuckle to be had, it comes from Galifianakis and franchise-newcomer Melissa McCarthy, who at least manage to lend a little heart to what is quite frankly an unpleasant 100 minutes.


Directed by: Todd Phillips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, John Goodman, Melissa McCarthy
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #987: 'The Hangover Part II' (2011)

Todd Phillips' approach to part two of his surprise comedy smash The Hangover (2009) is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The original made bona fide stars out of its lead trio and grossed half a billion dollars in the process, so a sequel was always going to be on the cards. The simple formula of the hapless heroes waking up from a stag night of drink, drugs and debauchery to find the groom missing and a variety of clues lying around to help them work out just what the hell happened felt fresh, and the natural charisma of its stars, particularly Zach Galifianakis, made for a hilarious experience.

By sticking to the formula, Phillips has forced himself to a corner where the details have to bigger and more outlandish. Instead of Vegas, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) are in Thailand to celebrate Stu's upcoming wedding to Lauren (Jamie Chung). After a planned quiet night on the beach with a beer and marshmallows, they wake up in a grimy hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of the night before and inexplicably in the presence of gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeung) from the first film. When Chow seemingly overdoses on cocaine, they are left to piece things together themselves.

If this was a stand-alone movie without the existence of its predecessor, then this probably would have been a winner. While its frequently goes overboard with the crass humour, its consistently amusing without succeeding in being quite so laugh-out-loud as the first movie, thanks mainly again to Galifianakis, whose man-child Alan is the funniest aspect of the film. Yet while his naivety and plain stupidity was so endearing in the original, the sequel also takes Alan to increasingly dark places. Here, he is not so much social inept but dangerously insane to the point that he becomes occasionally outright unlikeable.

And this is the main issue - replacing charm and goofiness with extreme humour. Stu was missing a tooth in the first film, but this time he wakes up with a Mike Tyson tribal tattoo on his face. Rather than Tyson's tiger, we have a chain-smoking drug-mule monkey. Rather than finding Doug (Justin Bartha) vanished, they lose Lauren's prodigal younger brother Teddy (Mason Lee), to which the only clue to his participation is his severed finger. And having previously married a stripper, Stu discovers that - in the most uncomfortably unfunny scene - he has been sodomised by a ladyboy. Add to the mix a sub-plot involving gangster Kingsley (Paul Giamatti) and his search for Chow, the film spends too much time away from the hapless threesome's interplay in favour of watching their reactions to a variety of cruel situations.


Directed by: Todd Phillips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Paul Giamatti
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #618: 'The Hangover' (2009)

Three close friends and the groom's strange brother-in-law travel to Vegas for a bachelor party they will never forget. Teacher Phil (Bradley Cooper) is a womaniser with a wife and kids, Stu (Ed Helms) is in an unhappy marriage with an overbearing, abusive wife, Doug (Justin Bartha) is the groom hoping for a send-off to end all send-off's, and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), is a naive man-child hoping to make friends. When they wake up in the morning, they find their suite demolished, a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, and most worryingly of all, Doug is missing. They clean themselves up and set out to find Doug, and using the various clues lying around, they begin to piece together the night.

Of course, bachelor party movies are hardly hard to come by, and they have been a staple of the gross-out comedy circuit since the 1980's. The Hangover finds its originality in the fact that it focuses on the morning after, rather than the actual night itself, which we see none of. It also has a sense of believability, as if three of the characters have genuinely been friends for years, and are gradually accepting the increasingly strange Alan into their wolf-pack. After all, Alan is often unnervingly strange, but the group find him funny too, and why wouldn't they? Cult stand-up comedian Galifianakis has been around for years, starring in various failed pilots and never quite getting the attention he deserved, but he is by far the best thing in The Hangover, with the mixture of his quite sweet innocence and his random one-liners fitting in with the film's heartfelt moments.

It also keeps the gross humour thankfully down to a minimum. Sure it's often bad taste, but there's a noticeable lack of bare-breasted women and any jokes involving bodily fluids. This is still R-rated, but the humour is in the script and the performances, and doesn't resort to someone shitting themselves for desperate laughs. It's similar in many ways to 2007's Superbad, where the language was filthy, but the laughs were genuine, and the situations, however absurd, still felt somewhat real. And when the credits rolled, I was left with that unfamiliar desire to spend more time with these characters. Special mention must also go to Chinese gangster Mr. Chow (played by Ken Jeong, who simply needs to be in more films), who has one of the best comedy burn lines in history, "so long, gay boys!".


Directed by: Todd Phillips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong
Country: USA/Germany

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie