What happens in Vegas...
Four men, a baby and Mike Tyson make for a funny guy flick
By Alex Field 06/18/2009
The Hangover
Directed by Todd Phillips. Starring: Bradley Cooper,
Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha.
Rated R for pervasive language, sexual content and some drug material. 1 hr., 40 min.
A scene from The Hangover: Four men are late to a wedding. They wear dirty, torn and bloodied clothes and drive at insane speeds down the highway, weaving in and out of traffic, headed from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. One man is missing a tooth, one has a black eye and another sports a bright red sunburn. A tuxedo shop van pulls up next to them driving 80 mph, and a long-haired shop attendant throws them four packages: tuxedoes for the wedding. They stop, dress, jump in the car and drive like bats out of hell.
This is The Hangover. A fast-moving comedy attempting to do something at very high speeds and succeeding, but just barely. It is an unlikely candidate for No. 1 film at the box office last weekend, but in the era of Judd Apatow-influenced, vulgar comedies with a heart, The Hangover delivers on its one-note premise and nails the successful box-office formula of films like Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
The Hangover brings four grown men on a journey to Las Vegas for a bachelor party; and after they arrive, they toast the night they’re about to have, then BLACK OUT. Three of the four men wake up to find the groom-to-be is gone. The three can’t remember a thing about the night before. Plus — there’s a tiger in the bathroom and a crying baby in the closet.
The three remaining friends spend the rest of the film piecing together the mystery in a kind of half-drunk Dick Tracy shuffle, as the bewildered and progressively beat-up men run around Vegas stumbling across clues and witnesses who rant about their apparent antics the night before.
During the investigation, they find themselves in a hospital, a police station, a car impound, a Vegas wedding chapel, a stripper’s apartment and in Mike Tyson’s glamorous home.
While the premise strikes a simplistic note, the motivation of these men is ever-present: They must find their best friend (the groom is played by nice guy Justin Bartha) and get to the wedding. This motivation, alongside the fact that the wedding is only hours away, drives constant movement onscreen, as each act of the film slingshots convincingly into the next.
The charismatic Phil (Bradley Cooper of Alias and Yes Man) is the Adonis of the group, and Cooper is coming into his own as a full-fledged leading man. Strait-laced dentist Stu (Ed Helms), fresh from his day job on The Office, turns in a hilarious performance as the man with an overbearing girlfriend who cheats on him but convinces him that she didn’t mean it. Stu becomes the quintessential doormat schlub, who discovers, over the course of a 48-hour journey, a little something about himself.
The infamous Mike Tyson, who shows up for about minute or two and gets in one powerful punch, comes off a bit awkward with his strange face tattoo and his little half-smile, but he doesn’t get in the way.
Moody comedian Zack Galifianakis plays Alan, the brother of the bride and the intensely awkward new brother-in-law to groom Doug. At the start of the film, the three best friends regard Galifianakis as unquestionably crazy, but in an ironic twist, his character’s penchant for rushed intimacy, a kind of sad naiveté and lines like “You guys are the best friends I’ve ever had!” form the glue that draws the four men together in the end.
As low-brow as all the humor is in The Hangover, the film’s themes speak to those male relationships in which a man will do anything for his best friends; but beneath all the raunchy gags and the hopeful themes, The Hangover will make you laugh.
And that seemed to be the goal all along.
Alex Field is an aggressive film lover who watches movies not quite daily. His book The Hollywood Project: A look into the minds of the makers of spiritually relevant films was published in 2004. By day he is a book editor, by night he blogs at alexanderfield.blogspot.com.
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