My Hangover review from back in the day

So I realized I never posted my Hangover review on this site. Here it is in all it's glory.





4 guys go on a road trip to Vegas. At some point of the night they lose track of what happens. Hilarity ensues. Simple enough plot to bring in average movie goers looking for a potentially raunchy laughs. I mean, this is after all directed by the guy who did Old School. You know what to expect with this one.

There’s my problem. Now, I’m trying to be even in my head about this. I had a couple moments of laughing out loud. And too be fair, I was in the first showing of the day with at most 15 other people. You can get a lot more laughs out of a flick when there is a crowd involved. So, ok, I want to talk about what I thought was good first.

Things I liked:

Movie Flow- The movie had my interest the whole time. I have ADD, it is very easy for me to lose interest in anything I do not feel vested in. I think the way they kept me in it the whole time was through their “clue leads to other clue” method. I really liked that they didn’t just keep bumping into people that went “Hey! The guys I saw here last night!” I mean, they did run into a couple of those, but usually only after devising that they had been at said location before by finding a receipt, ticket stub, hospital band, etc.

Likability of the characters- This movie is going to draw a lot of comparisons to Old School. Hell, I already did that in the first paragraph. But I am happy to say, THERE IS NO VINCE VAUGHN. Now, don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy Mr. Vaughn’s acting. I enjoy several movies he is in. But his characters are always unlikable dicks. None of the guys in The Hangover feel that way to me. Ed Helms (Stu) is always worried but never whiny. Bradley Cooper(Phil) is a let’s have fun no matter what guy, but he is also the cool headed guy making everyone calm down. Zack Galifianakis (Alan) is the slightly of kilter guy, but he isn’t full-on-nuts. He has some SENSE. I like that. And Justin Bartha (Doug)? I just like him in general. He was Riley Poole in the National Treasure movies and he just seems like a cool guy. Even the “antagonists” of the film had likability. Mike Tyson had a bigger part then I thought he would, and although Tyson himself is not necessary to the story(could have been any celeb really), the scenes that revolve around him are some of the best. I’m glad it wasn’t just “RANDOM Mike Tyson”. And my favorite guy in the flick was definitely Ken Jeong (Mr. Chow). This guy knows how to make me laugh, even if I do see his junk at one point in the film. He is the king from Rolemodels in case you have no idea who I am talking about. Of course, I could just secretly be a racist who enjoys stereotypes. But he makes some fat jokes. I like fat jokes.

Things Not so much:

Recycled Jokes- I was kind of irked by how many things I had seen before in other films. Married to person you just met who turns out to be better than the person you are with. Dumb guy has a really smart side too him. An animal/car destruction scene straight out of Tommy Boy (and probably 100 other flicks). There were a few things I thought could have been funnier. Like more baby jokes! Every movie is better with more baby jokes. In fact, everything in the movie was pretty predictable (Yes, yes, He’s missing a tooth, we get it). I’m trying not to be too hard on it, but you can do only so many road trip gone wrong movies before we have seen everything that can happen. The movie made me laugh out loud when Stu is playing the piano, singing their tale like a bard. It made me laugh when Alan was making awkward “best friends” speeches. The two cops made me laughing pretty hard (Rob Riggle, Cleo King). The part during the credits: AWESOME. The rest was kind of, eh.

Things I hated:

Soundtrack- This can’t be helped. Party songs are so plentiful that you are bound to get bad music in the mix. But “Who let the Dogs Out”? Do we ever need to hear the Baja Men again?

Verdict:

This is what it comes down to: The movie just really didn’t hit my funny bone. It hit my amused bone the whole way through. I guess I was hoping for something a little wittier. And of course, that’s my problem, not the average movie goers. Smart asses make me laugh. So I say it is worth seeing, but maybe not in the theatre. It’s probably better to just wait for the DVD or see it at the cheap theater.