The Hangover
Groomsmen take groom to Vegas for Bachelor Party. On the roof of Caeser’s Palace, the four toast to a night they’ll never forget. The next morning, their Villa suite is trashed beyond recognition, their memories are a veritable blank slate about the night before, which isn’t really that good since the groom is missing. When the film starts, there’s five hours until the wedding, and best bud Phil (Bradley Cooper, whose rugged looks hide a first-class charmer) is telling the bride, “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
Directed by dry, devious anarchy by Todd Phillips (he of “Starsky & Hutch”- boo- and “Old School”- better), the movie finds Phil, Stu (Ed Helms, peerless in his ability to be nerdy and laugh-out-loud hilarious), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis, the film’s ace in the whole as an overweight- and slightly off-balance- brother-in-law to the groom) searching Vegas, following clues, and retracing their steps that led to a room with a chicken, a baby Mike Tyson’s Bengal tiger, a missing tooth (it’s Stu’s) and a missing mattress and groom (Justin Bartha).
Phillips mines the script by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (these guys seriously wrote the chick flick deluxe “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past?”) for every laugh, some bigger than others, all of which taking the groomsmen on a dissection of the type of night, deep down, I think most guys would kill to be a part of. Of course, part of that includes almost getting killed by Japanese gangsters (led by a “he just did that” turn by Ken Jeong that you truly have to see to believe), a drunken wedding to a stripper named Jade (Heather Graham, a bright and beautiful sight for sore eyes, especially when she’s breast-feeding the baby left in the room), and an awkward look at surveillance tapes at Mike Tyson’s house to see just how exactly they ended up with Iron Mike’s tiger.
Funny moments abound in a film- scored with buoyant joy by Christophe Beck- where Stu’s girlfriend Melissa (the cute but bitchy Rachael Harris) demands that he call her frequently- hard to do when you’re drunk and drugged silly (curse drug dealers who don’t know Ecstacy from a Ruffie), Alan looks as bizarre sober as he is stoned off his ass, and a trip to the emergency room offers many clues, including good news that Phil- a teacher with a family- wasn’t raped. The vengeance for stealing a cop car, however, seems a bit cruel, even if it’s cruelly hilarious as dispensed by children. A camera lodged into the seat of their ride offers a snap-shot memory of the night (seen over the credits, and pushing that R-rating to the limits), though I was left wondering one thing- where the F#@% did that chicken come from?
