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Review

The Hangover

Director

Todd Phillips

Year

2009

Rating

Reviewed by

Gon Curiel a.k.a. Groucho

Review date

Monday, August 24, 2009

I thought, perhaps rightfully, that The Hangover was not to be taken seriously. I had no intention of watching it soon. However, everyone started to talk about it, and I considered I might be missing on something worth seeing. The success was crazy. Three weeks after its release, my girlfriend and I had to stand in line a half hour before it started to get a good place in the theater. The film started and laughter burst soon enough.

It’s not hilarious, but being what it is, one couldn’t ask for much more. As soon as you get the premise, you expect something and you get it. There are a few details that add something extra, but overall, it is what it is, and that’s good. It’s harmless fun, not a waste of time, but nothing to write home about.

The story is about a bachelor party in Las Vegas where the four guys involved get so wild they can’t remember anything the day after, but there’s evidence that they did more than a few things they should worry about. The bachelor is missing, there’s a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, and many more signs of Vegas fun taken to the extreme.

The key to this comedy’s success, I think, is its frankness. Though it’s farfetched to say the least, it never treats its characters as anything special. They are what they are and we never see them out of character. We only see the before and the after, not the during, which helps because we don’t really have to believe they would do what we’re told they do, because they don’t believe it themselves.

Except for the bachelor, Doug, played by Justin Bartha, the guys are peculiar in different ways: Bradley Cooper is Phil, a “cool” schoolteacher who’s more than eager to go wild as he did in the old days; Ed Helms is Stu, an uptight dentist who’s about to marry a controlling, abusive woman; and Zach Galifianakis is Alan, Doug’s extravagant brother-in-law-to-be. They all stay in their place: Phil always proud of what it seems they did, Stu constantly terrified of his fiancée, and Alan providing outrageous commentary on the goings-on.

The guys’ investigation of last night is much funnier, for sure, than the night itself would have been for us, which makes The Hangover rise above most party movies that go nowhere. Whoever has had a terrible hangover, complete with memory loss, understands the fear of having done something regrettable and not being able to remember it or do something about it. This is the only good film I’ve seen about that, and it should be praised for doing it so well.

However, true to its nature, never wanting to be more than it is, despite its potential to be much more, The Hangover stays put inside its boundaries and scores as a summer blockbuster that’s sure to make millions and sell a few DVDs and Blu-Rays and be forgotten in a few years. It’s definitely not memorable, but it’s surely a movie experience to comment with the guys, especially when you’re months away from going to a bachelor party in Las Vegas, hoping to come back with good memory of all the fun.

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