Three buddies wake up from a bachelor party in Las Vegas,
with no memory of the previous night and the bachelor missing. They make their
way around the city in order to find their friend before his wedding.
Director: Todd
Phillips
Writers: Jon Lucas,
Scott Moore
Stars: Zach
Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha
Storyline
Angelenos Doug Billings and Tracy Garner are about to get
married. Two days before the wedding, the four men in the wedding party - Doug,
Doug's two best buddies Phil Wenneck and Stu Price, and Tracy's brother Alan
Garner - hop into Tracy's father's beloved Mercedes convertible for a 24-hour
stag party to Las Vegas. Phil, a married high school teacher, has the same
maturity level as his students when he's with his pals. Stu, a dentist, is
worried about everything, especially what his controlling girlfriend Melissa
thinks. Because she disapproves of traditional male bonding rituals, Stu has to
lie to her about the stag, he telling her that they are going on a wine tasting
tour in the Napa Valley. Regardless, he intends on eventually marrying her,
against the advice and wishes of his friends. And Alan seems to be unaware of
what are considered the social graces of the western world. The morning after
their arrival in Las Vegas, they awaken in their hotel suite each with the
worst ..
User Reviews
13 June 2009 | by joecunningham14 (United Kingdom)
If there's a film that will be sold on word of mouth alone
this summer, it's The Hangover. With a funny but unspectacular trailer, a plot
(guys go to Vegas for bachelor party and crazy things happens) that seems
overly familiar, and stars who are relative unknowns there's nothing to suggest
anything hugely promising. But those who have seen it can surely testify that
it's a 24-carat piece of comedy gold, for once you can believe the marketing
moguls...we have been graced by the sleeper comedy hit of the summer. On closer
inspection it shouldn't actually have been that surprising, Todd Phillips
occupies the director's chair and his previous output includes such hits as
Road Trip, Old School and Starsky and Hutch. 'The Hangover' though easily
surpasses those by merit of providing regular and consistent laughs amidst
backdrop of a frenetic and unrelenting morning after.
The problems most comedies face are that they have to put
all their best laughs in the trailer, so by the time the film comes around the
funniest parts lose their impact and the rest of the film is disappointing in
comparison. This is a problem The Hangover sidesteps masterfully. Yes we know
they wake up with no memory of what went before; there's a baby, a tiger, a
chicken, a missing tooth, someone's married a hooker and (in an unsurprisingly
bizarre cameo) Mike Tyson turns up...but these moments, albeit hilarious,
aren't what make the film tick. The heart of the film is in the chemistry
between the three leads; Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach
Galifianakis) are likable and identifiable enough for an audience to go along
with events that could quite easily in another context seem ridiculous. Alan in
particular is a character that could really grind your gears if he turned up in
certain films, as part of the affable trio however he grows on you immensely.
This success may partly be credited to casting unfamiliar
faces but the actors themselves deserve huge credit. Cooper may already be
slightly familiar to some and is undoubtedly a star in the making (having been
cast this week as Faceman in the new A Team flick), Helms is best known for his
stint in the US version of the office, Galifianakis though has come completely
out of the blue and it wouldn't be at all a surprise to see him follow a career
path similar to Seth Rogen's post Knocked Up. The missing groom Doug (Justin
Bartha) also deserves an honourable mention for slotting effortlessly into the
group when around, it's a shame the plot requires him to go missing for the
most part. There's also perfectly pitched cameos for Heather Graham, Jeffrey
Tambor, Ken Jeong and best of all Rachael Harris who is magnificently vile as
the hapless Stu's wife.
Phillips has no qualms puts his characters through the
wringer, there's one shocking revelation after another as the people, animals
and events they encountered the night before come back to bite them on the ass
during the search for Doug. As the audience know as little as the characters do
the reactions ring true, they suspend disbelief as colossally silly events are
only matched in magnitude by the sound of laughs in the theatre. The Hangover never
quite lets up - the laughs even continue way into the credits - so it should
come as no surprise that a sequel is already being planned. Having come up with
something so fresh here the producers will have to be careful not to suffer
from a hangover themselves the second time around.
Verdict: Brilliant chemistry and a few plot tweaks make The
Hangover better than you could possibly be expecting going in. It's funny from
start to finish and is guaranteed to have you leaving the cinema with a smile
on your face.
