SYNOPSIS
Best buds Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Doug (Justin Bartha) head to Vegas to celebrate Doug’s impending nuptials, with Doug’s future brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in tow. Due to a pharmaceutical mix-up on Alan’s part, he, Phil, and Stu wake up the next morning with no recollection whatsoever of what happened the night before; all they know is their suite looks like a war zone, there’s a tiger in the bathroom, and Doug nowhere to be found. As they desperately search for their missing pal, they discover that whatever they were up to the night before involved a stolen cop car, a fey Asian gangster wannabe (Ken Jeong), an infant and his hooker mom (Heather Graham), and Mike Tyson (Mike Tyson).
CRITIQUE
Had I bought into the hype, I likely would have gone into this movie expecting something as funny as Dr. Strangelove or Blazing Saddles. A lot has been made of the fact that The Hangover supplanted Wedding Crashers as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, but I’m pretty sure that everyone reading this knows financial success isn’t always (or even often) an indicator of quality. (Anyone who does should take a gander at the grosses for the Transformers sequel.)
Yes, a lot of people went to see The Hangover, and a lot of those people went to see it again, but I’m more than a bit taken aback by this success. I don’t know, maybe it’s funnier if you see it with a crowd. Or maybe everyone who turned out was clairvoyant enough to realize that in a year in which Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds trade unfunny banter before predictably falling in love, Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker trade unfunny banter before predictable re-falling in love, and Judd Apatow offers up an interminable (and failed) attempt to transform himself into James L. Brooks, The Hangover looked like the only thing likely to supply any genuine laughs. And it does. This is by no means one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, but it’s far and away the funniest movie I’ve seen this year.
An inability to be consistently funny is what prevents The Hangover from truly succeeding. It can be very, very funny, but it’s never very, very funny for a prolonged period of time. The setup is almost completely devoid of laughs, and the same is true of the climax. (I suppose that this is as good a place as any to mention that the big reveal/resolution is something of a letdown.)
The movie is at its best during the stretch involving the trio’s attempts to locate Doug and figure out exactly what the hell they did the night before. That’s where you get, among other good stuff, Galifianakis doing something to a baby that is as funny as it is wrong (for their sake, I hope the identities of the children portraying said baby are never revealed), Galifianakis nonchalantly smacking a cell phone out of the hands of a fat kid (don’t worry--the kid has his revenge), Galifianakis befouling Tyson’s pool, Jeong doing what he does best (and using what appears to be Elton John’s toupee as a merkin in the process), and Graham nonchalantly breastfeeding her kid. (Remember what I said about protecting the identities of the movie’s infant costars? Well, I don’t think anyone would blame the one featured in that bit I listed if he decided to go public.)
If you’re like me and pay close attention to a movie’s credits, you may have noticed that Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are credited with this movie’s script. These are the same guys responsible for Four Christmases and The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Under normal circumstances I’d tell you to avoid anything written by these guys the way the British avoid orthodontists, but you should know that the script was given a major rewrite by Jeremy Garelick, who was brought in by director Todd Phillips in hopes of making the movie less sentimental and more, for lack of a better word, disreputable. Thanks to the draconian rules of the Writers Guild, Garelick (who had a hand in the script for The Break-Up) was denied credit, but thankfully Phillips (who has a funny cameo in the movie) has gone out of his way to make sure Garelick’s contributions don’t go unheralded.
It wouldn’t be a home video release of an R-rated comedy without an unrated cut tossed in, so included here you’ll find an alternate version of the movie that runs roughly eight minutes longer than the theatrical cut. Nothing of substance has been spliced back in; the added material--some of which is pretty funny--consists of a couple of new scenes and a bunch of scene extensions. And it certainly doesn’t represent any sort of Director’s Cut, but instead looks to be more of a penultimate cut. And given that the theatrical cut could have used a trim here and there, the unrated version is more than a bit overlong.
THE VIDEO
Modern comedies usually don’t offer much in the way of visual stylistics, but Phillips is one of the few working in the genre to actually give a damn. This Blu-ray’s 2.40:1/1080p transfer--encoded with VC-1 and spread across a 50GB disc--looks darned near perfect. It’s smooth, detailed, and film-like, with strong blacks and excellent color reproduction. I did notice some mild moiré (you can spot it in one or two fabric weaves and on the grill of the Mercedes), but that’s it as far as complaints go.
THE AUDIO
Modern comedies usually don’t offer much in the way of sonic stylistics, and this movie is no exception. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track included here rarely ever expands beyond the front half of the soundstage. There’s the standard music bleed and the odd discrete effect or two, but that’s about it. That’s really not so bad, but the dialogue has a bit of a flat quality, and its character doesn’t change from location to location; it’s always intelligible, but it often lacks color.
English, French, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.
THE EXTRAS
All of the extras here are presented in high-definition video.
The bonus material kicks off with a picture-in-picture commentary featuring Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms (which is available for the theatrical version only). You’d expect it to be a laugh riot, but it’s anything but. Most of the time the participants simply quietly watch the movie, and watching someone else quietly watch a movie isn’t much fun.
What’s cleverly been dubbed more pictures from the missing camera offers an extended collection of the slideshow that accompanies the end credits. (Speaking of, there’s one particularly graphic photo I can’t believe they managed to sneak past the MPAA.)
Map of Destruction is an interactive (or at least pseudo-interactive) feature that charts the journey the guys took as they tore across Vegas.
The Madness of Ken Jeong (8 minutes) is a compilation of the funnyman’s unused improvs.
Action Mash-Up (less than 1 minute) is a montage of some of the movie’s physical comedy.
“Three Best Friends” song (1 minute) is a longer version of a song Galifianakis improvises during one scene.
The Dan Band! (1 minute) is more footage of the wedding band (who’ve appeared in most of Phillips’s flicks) performing the theme to Fame.
Closing out the extras is a gag reel (8 minutes), which is actually quite a bit funnier than such affairs normally are.
The disc is also BD-Live enabled, providing access to a Cursing Mash-Up (all of the movie’s profanity jammed into a montage) and an Iron Mike Online Teaser (footage of Tyson doing his best Phil Collins).
Early pressings also include a Digital Copy of the theatrical cut.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Hangover is definitely funny, but it’s definitely not as funny as you’ve likely been lead to believe. But like I said, no movie this year has supplied as many genuine laughs.
