Going into The Hangover, I was expecting a standard R-Rated comedy with a few laughs mixed with a few groans. Instead of that, The Hangover is a fairly well-told mystery story with a good deal of humour to go along with it. It’s a return to the raunchy comedy that made Todd Phillips’ previous films, Old School and Road Trip, popular with audiences. After struggling with the PG-13 School for Scoundrels, this also marks a return to form for Todd Phillips. Thanks to the ingenious screenplay credited to Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and game performances from the three up and coming actors in the leads, The Hangover will probably please most young males and probably a few young females as well. I hear they think Bradley Cooper is “dreamy” these days.
The set-up is simple enough: four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning, their hotel suite is wrecked beyond belief and the groom-to-be, Doug (Justin Bartha) is missing, but none of them can remember what happened or where he went. The other three need to find him before his wedding the next day. Stu (Ed Helms) is a dentist who needs to run away from his incredibly bitchy girlfriend, whom he tells that they are going to Napa for wine tasting, Phil (Bradley Cooper, whom I interviewed here) is a jaded high school teacher that steals money from his kids to finance this trip, and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) is Doug’s very strange, possibly handicapped, soon-to-be brother-in-law. All three actors seem to be having a good time here, Ed Helms spends most of the film missing a tooth (apparently, he removed it himself) and Cooper is excellent in this sort of role, but Galifianakis steals most of the scenes he’s in. I can see his humour wearing thin if he gets too overexposed in the near future, but if this film is successful, it should turn him into a star. Of course, people probably said that about Tom Green after Road Trip, but, you know.