Release Date: June 5
Director: Todd Phillips
Writers: Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
Cinematographer: Lawrence Sher
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms,
Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha
Studio/Run Time: Warner Bros.
Pictures, 100 mins
Three Men and a Groom in Vegas
Anticipating the headache described in
its title, I wasn’t looking forward to The Hangover, a raucous
guys-in-Vegas, party-outta-control movie with a plot lifted from that
influential modern American work of art, Dude, Where’s My Car? Here
come the shrill, controlling, humorless girlfriends, the obnoxious
boozing of boys who will be boys, and—yikes—a bundle of joy that
could turn the whole stupid thing into 4 Men and a Baby. Dude,
where’s my self respect? And if we can’t find that, how about a
barf bag?
While I’m not ready to call the film
a triumph, its approach to humor is smart enough to benefit greatly
from low expectations. Which is to say, it’s an enjoyable piece of
trash. Doug, a groom-to-be, and his three groomsmen pile into a car
and head to Vegas for a night on the town before the big day, and the
film’s slightly unexpected sense of detail emerges once they hit
the road. The guys tool along the highway very slowly so they don’t
ding the classic Mercedes that was loaned to them by the father of
the bride. A child in the next car over flips them off, and they
recoil in shock. Party animals, these aren’t—or at least they
aren’t any more.
But the real trick of the film appears
when the guys begin their evening with a toast on the roof of their
hotel. Director Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip) cuts
immediately to the aftermath the next day, without even a glimpse of
what transpired that night, plunging us—and the characters—into
the surreal morning after, where a surprise is planted in every
corner of the suite. A lost tooth. A live chicken. A wrist band from
a hospital visit. What the hell happened?
From there the guys retrace their steps
to reconstruct the night’s events in order to understand and, where
necessary, undo the current situation, like the guy with no
short-term memory in Memento. The wedding looms over the horizon.
Time is of the essence. But that cut from the roof straight to the
hangover shows Phillips’ strategy of economy. Humor depends on
logic, so tracing the steps is important, but not if the procedural
bogs down the jokes. The Hangover finds a nice balance between
answering questions and zipping through set pieces.
The humor, of course, is dumb and
offensive, but in an entirely expected way—which is to say not
offensive at all, unless you figured there’d be no jokes about
women or gay men or tighty whities or ugly people. The movie betrays
its good-natured roots in the final third when a live tiger overstays
its welcome and elicits horrified looks that would have fit into a
Disney film from the ’50s. I flashed back to Fred MacMurray
demonstrating flubber, and Tommy Kirk turning into a shaggy dog, and
Dean Jones stiffening at the sight of a brewing disaster. (Or,
further back, Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby where the “baby” is
indeed a leopard.) This is old-fashioned comedy that relies on
well-timed reaction shots as much as it does fantastical situations,
and Zach Galifianakis is particularly enjoyable as the sweet but
strange loser who will become Doug’s brother-in-law if the mess is
cleaned up in time. Sharing a family with this guy would be a mixed
reward, but the film’s obvious affection for the lug, like its
excitement over a loose tiger and its chuckles at the thought of Mike
Tyson singing a Phil Collins song, are easy to like. Thankfully, the
baby in the film is nothing but a joke, and The Hangover, which never
turns serious, is pointless, goofy fun.