Film Review: The Hangover (2009)

Hungover groomsmen Stu, Alan, and Phil take a break from their search in "The Hangover"

The premise is classic: four friends take a vacation of hilarious proportion. This time, it’s to Las Vegas, for Doug’s (Justin Bartha) stag night, and with him he brings his relatively fresh-faced cast of buddies - Phil, a school teacher bored with marriage, Stu, a dentist with a girlfriend from Hell, and his soon to be brother-in-law, Alan (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, & Zach Galifianakis). The twist? They have an unforgettable night, but we’re not invited to see it. Instead, the story really begins to morning after: Doug is lost, there’s a tiger in the hotel bathroom, and they can’t remember a thing.

What follows is their vacant quest to find the missing groom and figure out what the heck happened after all those shots on the roof of Caesars Palace. They trawl Las Vegas, searching for clues, trying to reacquaint themselves with the familiar. We get the clues as they do, which is a simple touch well played. Along the way, Heather Graham stars as a friendly romantic interest in a performance that is either pointless or underplayed, and Mike Tyson pops up in a turn that is both unnecessary and awkward. Everybody else is great, though, especially the main cast, who bicker and bitch throughout, but remain entirely watchable.

So is The Hangover the kind of film that will keep you in hysterics for the 100-minute runtime? No, probably not. You might not even find yourself laughing out loud once, depending on your taste. That doesn't mean to say that the film isn't funny - it is, and the gag rate is frequent and varied. It's just that the jokes can't seem to find a place between the subtle and the epic. They're blended of both. You’ll snigger to yourself a dozen times, and smile your way through the rest, but the movie seems to winder on an exclusive comedic tone that stops you from exploding with laughter, and dares you to even attempt anything more than a chuckle after the first ten minutes.

Perhaps it’s suggestible that The Hangover would do better under declaration as a comedy drama. No, maybe not. But that thought might pop into the heads of moviegoers. It doesn't have the hysterical factor of say, Apatow classics like Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but is packed with clever jokes and a brilliant cast who grant you with the warmest feeling when they begin to bond and understand each other. That's the price we pay: we get sentiment instead of some of the smut. It just so happens that most of the sentiment is disguised beneath the smut, so you never really know whether you should be laughing or not. (***)