Rabs’ Review: The Hangover is Very Funny, But FOR ME, Lacked LOL

THE HANGOVER (A-)

How many times have you woke up on the floor of your apartment or house after a blackout night of drinking? All the lights are on, there’s a burnt pizza is in the oven, the TV is blaring and your cell phone and wallet are missing. You get up, chug any non-alcoholic liquid you can find and spend the remainder of your afternoon trying to figure out what the hell happened the night before. I know there’s a lot of people huffing and puffing with steam coming out of their ears after reading the title of this movie review, but just hear me out. I went to see The Hangover yesterday with a few buddies and it was entertaining and funny. The concept is genius.  It’s about time that they took this simple, hilarious idea that so many millions of Americans have experienced and made it into a 96-minute movie.

The Hangover is the first film from Todd Phillips since 2006′ School For Scoundrels. Todd is the one of the pioneers of this generation’s raunchy R-rated comedies, with Road Trip and Old School at the beginning of the decade. It’s good for the genre that he’s been back as it has been over-saturated over the past three years by Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell. I say this not as a criticism, as all three of these comedy kings have blessed us with quality laughs, but their brand names have created somewhat of a monopoly of the R-rated raunchy comedy genre.

As I alluded to in my opening, The Hangover is a simple, but brilliant story. Three mid-30′s guys take their best friend Doug to Las Vegas for one night last night of epic partying before he gets married the following day. Two of these guys have established, suburban lives. Bradley Cooper plays Phil, a handsome school teacher with a wife and son. Ed Helms plays Stu, a reserved dentist with no backbone who is controlled by his wench girlfriend. And finally, the hilarious Zach Galifianakis plays Alan, the brother of the bride-to-be who is adorably stupid and obviously the black sheep of the family with his ridiculously massive ho-bo beard. The four friends arrive in Vegas with all the classic anticipation that any group of American guy friends would have as they enter the sin city. VEGAS BABY!….VEGAS!!! The guys want this to be a night they’ll never forget so they reserve the villa sweet at Caesar’s Palace, chipping in an extra $4,200 for the room. The deposit for the room is put under  Stu’s credit card, which he is reluctant to do at first because his bitch girlfriend checks his bank statements (and he told her that he was going to a quiet, secluded farm for Doug’s send-off) , but the hotel clerk and Phil assure him that they can split the bill the following morning when they check out.  Big mistake.

They head up to the roof of the hotel to gaze at the gleaming lights of the Vegas strip and to toast Doug. Alan whips out some shots of Jäge, which he had unknowingly put roofies in (he thought they were ecstasy as he wanted the night to be a truly epic Vegas adventure). The camera shot of the Vegas strip fast-forwards to daylight and they all wake up in their room the following morning in the hotel room which is destroyed. Stu is missing a tooth, the TV is broken, there is weird shit everywhere, Phil has a hospital admittance bracelet, a tiger is in the bathroom, there’s a crying baby in the closet and Doug is missing. The rest of the film consists of the three friends re-tracing the steps of their blackout night to fine Doug so they can get him home in time for the wedding.

The script is very well written and well-paced. I really liked the way things started off with the guys in the middle of the desert, beaten, bruised and exhausted with Phil calling Doug’s fiance saying “We fucked up,” obviously post-blackout. It then rewinds to before they leave for Vegas and comes back to that first scene during the final act, very Tarantino-esque.  Along with the crazy shit that happens in the film, the dialog is where a lot of the laughs come from. The writing duo of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore get much dirtier than their two most recent comedies (Four Christmases and Ghost of Girlfriends Past). With the very quick, snappy dialog that very truly displays how guys interact with each other “Paging doctor faggot!,” it allowed the characters to play off each other very well, with inevitable improvisation to spawn from. The inclusion of  Mike Tyson in the script was cool, but seemed a little forced. Oh, because he’s like the epitome of what Las Vegas represents, then he has to be the guy they stole the tiger from. And I know he’s not an actor or anything, but his attempts to deliver lines were painful to watch.

The performances by Helms, Cooper and Galifianakis are great. As the passive-aggressive, nerdy dentist, Ed Helms brings subdued elements of Andy Bernard from The Office and creates a character that you really care about. He is naively determined to propose to his mean girlfriend who cheated on him with a sailor on a cruise ship, “It was a bartender!” So you are really rooting for him to tell her off and get with the hot stripper that he drunkenly got married to (the super hot Heather Grahm). Bradley Cooper is going to be a big star after this. He’s been a steady role-player for many years in Wedding Crashers and He’s Just Not That Into You, but with a solid performance as the charismatic leader of this epic comedy adventure team, watch out for BC. I am so happy that Zach Galifianakis has the chance to showcase his brilliant humor to mainstream audiences. Zach has been a stand-up comedian for years providing some truly brilliant comedy with his signature piano jokes. As the underestimated “fat idiot” of the group, he provided some hilarious and memorable lines with his coy, bashful and dim-witted delivery.

Now this is where people are going to say “I beg to differ,” and that’s fine. As fantastic as the story is and as perfect the casting is, I was disappointed in how many times I had legitimate LAUGH-OUT-LOUD, knee-slapping reactions. I mean, this is my dream comedy. As someone who enjoys partying quite a bit, as someone who laughed hysterically at all of Todd Phillps’ previous films and as someone who was jacked from the phenomenal reviews I heard from friends and critics, I was sure this would be the funniest comedy ever made. However,  I just didn’t find my sides splitting as much as I thought and would have liked. It was kind of like, I knew what was happening on screen was funny and amusing, but it didn’t evoke a belly laugh response. A lot of the film is centered around and depends upon SHOCK VALUE, where something is so outrageous that it has to be hilarious. Right?

Take for instance a scene where the three guys are in a police station being grilled about a cop car that they had drunkely stolen the night before. Cooper sweet-talks the officer (The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle) into a compromising punishment where they agree to be guinea pigs in a taze-gun demonstration for elementary kids on a field trip. Riggle tazes Ed Helms in the shoulder and he drops like a fly, screaming. Then Cooper gets tazed in the nuts by a little girl with a similar reaction. Finally, Zach gets tazed in the face by a boy who he had earlier knocked away his cell phone while trying to take a picture. Zach is standing there with tazer wires in his face looking like he just got something shoved up his butt. Riggle then says, “Sometimes the bigger boys need a little more juice,” so he tazes him in the chest and Zach falls on the table in “hilarious” agony. A lot of the people in the audience were on the floor. I thought the scene was very entertaining and it was funny, but I’ve seen the slap-stick, physical harm bit many times before and this scene was like 10 minutes long. In this regard, I was disappointed in the lack for LOL…FOR ME.

Overall, it’s a great movie. It’s super entertaining and it’s really funny, but again (for the reasons elaborated upon before) I just didn’t LOL as much as I would have hoped. Comedies are like music though, you may not like parts at first, but after repeated viewings or listens, it grows on you. Perhaps I might have a different take on the LOL effect of The Hangover the second time around.

What Should You Do? Def check it out, it’s a good time.