Film:	The Hangover
Directed By:	Todd Phillips
Story, screenplay:	Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cinematography:	Lawrence Sher
Editor:	Debra Neil-Fisher
Music:	Christophe Beck
Sound:	Tim Chau, Lee Orloff, Clayton Weber
Cast:	Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Sasha Baresse, Rachael Harris

 

 

The Hangover is based on a rather whacky premise – that four friends wake up the night after a pre-wedding bachelor party, with no memories of the excesses of the night before – and is whacky enough at times.  The foursome that leave for a road trip to Vegas two days before the wedding of one of them are Phil (Bradley) the school teacher, Stu (Ed Helms) the dentist, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) the bride’s brother and Doug (Justin Bartha) the groom. Tracy is the bride to whom the news is broken at the film’s beginning, on her wedding day, that the wedding is not likely to happen. The film then goes back to two days ago, when the foursome had set off for Vegas in Tracy’s Dad’s prized Mercedes convertible. They are an odd lot, barring the regular enough Doug. Phil doesn’t mind using his students’ money to gamble. Stu is terrified of his domineering girlfriend, who has incidentally cheated on him with a cruise bartender, and has lied to her about this trip. Alan is fat, earnestly dumb and not quite there. Yes, the set up is funny and the characters are the typical losers who get laughs easily. Yet the film never manages to whip up the humour to the wild extents that it possibly could have. 

Instead, the film takes recourse to a lot of anal and penile jokes, and barring some hilarious moments, never rises above the predictable. What does work for the film though is its tone of irreverence and the politically and socially incorrect jokes. Like how Stu’s friends keep talking about his girlfriend having cheated on him with a ‘sailor’ and how he keeps correcting them to say it was with a ‘cruise bartender’.  

To come back to the morning after, when the guys wake up in a palatial Vegas hotel suite, and nothing seems quite right any more. There’s a hen running around, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet! Worse, one of them has a missing tooth, the groom is missing and all their memories too are gone missing. As the threesome try to retrace their steps of the night before, seeking to find their missing friend, many surprises and shocks await them. It seems like the friends had done some really bizarre stuff the night before, like one of them getting married to a total stranger and all of them stealing Mike Tyson’s tiger. Tyson of course wants his big cat back and apart from drugging it, Stu even sings a lullaby, so that they can put the tiger to sleep and then cart away the sleeping beauty.    

The mad escapades continue, as well as the unearthing of mad memories. Meanwhile the wedding draws closer till it is finally the morning. Doug is still missing, his bride frantic, and the groomsmen still doing their darned best to find him. And then, the film climaxes to its predictable fate. The ending is not just predictable, but tame and formulaic. Basically, a case of a whacky premise dumbed by the Hollywood studio treatment.   

I have to admit that a lot of members of the audience found the film much funnier than I did. Perhaps the fact that the film is doing so well worldwide made me expect something much funnier. But I did feel let down by the fact that a film with such a whacky premise was not as funny as it could have been. I also need to add a word of caution for those who are not too fond of crass, physical, sexual comedy for they will most certainly find large parts of the film offensive. People who don’t mind the above-mentioned traits and who are not very particular about their entertainment will enjoy the film.     

Rating:   Two and half stars out of five

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