If one good thing comes out of The Hangover—the
newest addition to Old School and Road Trip director Todd
Phillips’ fratboy canon—it’ll be turning comedians Zach
Galifianakis and Ed Helms into viable movie stars. They’re both very
funny guys, and here they do their best with a not-particularly-good
script from the screenwriters of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and
Four Christmases. After penning those chick flicks, Jon Lucas
and Scott Moore have done an about-face and written a dick
flick—one that equates gross-out offensiveness with wit.
Galifianakis’ awkward brand of humor dominates The Hangover,
where he plays Alan, the creepy brother of a bride-to-be who tags along
with the groom and groomsmen to a Vegas bachelor party. Alan slips them
each a roofie, and they all wake up the next morning with no
recollection of what happened. The hotel room is a mess, there’s a baby
in the closet, and a tiger in the bathroom. Oh, and the groom is
missing.
Helms, one of the best things about The Office and The
Daily Show, is sporadically funny as one of the groomsmen, a
dentist named Stu. (Guess how many jokes there are with Stu the dentist
claiming he’s a doctor, and someone correcting him! Probably about 50.)
Once they wake up, Alan and Stu—along with another groomsman, the
douchebaggy Phil (Bradley Cooper, the bad guy from Wedding
Crashers)—try to piece together their evening and find the
missing groom somewhere in Vegas.
Alas, instead of something akin to Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo
venturing into the seamy heart of Sin City, The Hangover comes
off like an R-rated Scooby-Doo mystery. But the real problem with
The Hangover is that it peaks too soon; early on, it succumbs to
over-the-top ridiculousness, then keeps trying to top itself. About
halfway through, it becomes repetitive, and then it just slides into
monotony. The movie’s offensive qualities are actually the best things
about it—it’s misogynistic, disgusting, nihilistic, spiteful, and
stupid, but remorselessly and gleefully so—but when The
Hangover can’t sustain the bar it sets for itself, it eventually
turns into a throbbing headache that won’t go away.