Okay, I liked The Hangover Part II, first of all. I liked it almost as much as I liked the first one. The cool thing about the first one is that storytelling structure, where the characters have to put together what they did/what happened to them the night before, and that’s back again. By definition it can’t be as surprising the second time, so by definition the movie can’t be as surprising, but still, the ante’s been upped. Much darker, creepier things happen this time around. Todd Phillips seems to be one of the few comedy directors working today that understands that a sense of danger is what powers some of the best comedy. You can argue whether he hits the laughter mark or not, but it would be hard to argue that his movies are innocuous or safe.
The Hangover Part II starts in a way that I have no choice but to love, over a personal favorite song by Jenny Lewis, then bringing us to the lovely Jamie Chung, amidst some beautiful location scenery, who’s trying to find where her fiancee has gone.
Jamie Chung.
As in the first Hangover, Tracy (Sasha Barrese, also from Let Me In) gets a call from Phil (Bradley Cooper), that the bachelor party has gone wrong and someone’s missing. This time, it’s not her fiancee-now-husband Doug (the bland, rather unnecessary Justin Bartha of Gigli fame), but Jamie Chung’s character’s little brother, a 16-year-old cello prodigy who got roped into the guys’ shenanigans. Yeah, this time it’s Ed Helms’s character Stu who’s getting married, and he scored Jamie Chung, which is boxing in a whole ‘nother weight class. If they can’t find little Teddy, Stu fears, the wedding is lost. Not helping matters is Alan (Zach Galifianakis), who Stu never wanted to invite in the first place, and Chow (Ken Jeong), the effeminate gangster from the first movie who Alan re-involves in this mess.
Yes, we saw it already. It’s up to you if you want to see it again. For me, I’m enough of a Galifianakis fan that it’s worth it to me to see anything he crops up in. A Galifianakis appearance is always good for some real good laughs, for me, and I don’t even understand people who don’t feel the same way. I’m not quite so enamored of Cooper and Helms, though I like them both, but the way that Galifianakis tortures them in these movies is fun to watch. Just the fact that these guys ARE so tortured in these movies is pretty funny to me. That’s not something we see much in comedy, this level of horror. Helms in particular seems thoroughly traumatized. It definitely makes the happy ending harder to take, and in this movie more than the first there’s a real cringe factor (the cameo appearance that becomes a musical number is almost amateurish and it really doesn’t sit right). But there’s some fun along the way, including a surprisingly constantly-funny supporting performance from a drug-dealing monkey, the interesting look into Thai night-life and the way that this unfamiliar setting is filmed so vividly (as I mentioned in my Due Date review Phillips is one of the few comedy filmmakers who actually makes comedies that look good), and a villainous role from one of my very favorite modern actors, who I really didn’t know was in this movie until I saw it. And please don’t IMDB it or read any of the reviews, because it’s a nice little surprise.
Speaking of reviews, you know, most reviews really suck. Let me go on this tangent now. I got home from the screening and opened the latest Rolling Stone and here’s how Peter Travers concluded his negative review of Hangover II:
Who’s to blame for the fuck-up? This time Phillips co-wrote the script with different scribes whose credits don’t inspire confidence: Scot Armstrong worked on the Farrelly brothers flop The Heartbreak Kid, and Craig Mazin lists Scary Movie 3 and 4 on his credit (debit?) sheet. Then again, Phillips collaborated bracingly on the first Hangover with Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who perpetrated the crimes of Four Christmases and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. The problem is that The Hangover Part II isn’t a movie at all, it’s just a blueprint for one. To those who say expediency and a rush to a big payday had nothing to do with getting this sizzle-free sequel into the summer marketplace, I’m calling bullshit.
Whether you like this movie or not, you have to understand that this is a garbage complaint, You can’t assign blame to what you think didn’t work about a movie on the co-writers. You, as Peter Travers, or any other film reviewer (I’m singling out Travers here but almost all of them do this crap), have NO idea what contribution each writer had to which movie. Yes, Scot Armstrong worked on The Heartbreak Kid, but he also worked on Road Trip, Old School, and Starsky & Hutch, all of which were hits. Craig Mazin wrote Scary Movies 3 & 4, but those movies actually had a few good laughs (unlike the two before it). Not for nothing, but I have to wonder if Peter Travers even actually SAW Scary Movie 3 and 4. As for Four Christmases, well I think that was a good idea and a watchable movie that didn’t totally work, and Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past I didn’t see but it’s a solid premise for a romantic comedy. Those are hardly crimes. This is the kind of hyperbole that a reviewer hacks out to fill space, or to save it.
Peter Travers knows way more about moviemaking than this passage shows (I have a cool book of his interviews that I still page through from time to time), but he’s increasingly not a viable gauge of whether a movie is worth seeing or not. The above passage tells you nothing about Hangover II, and everything about a reviewer who’s trying to sound smarter than the people who made it. Talk about THE MOVIE, not the co-writers. THE MOVIE is all we have in front of us to assess. For all you guys out there still reading reviews, beware of this kind of movie review. Be skeptical of reviews, even mine. If you want to see a movie, see it. Don’t let someone else’s conflicting opinions decide for you. If you have enough time, I always recommend seeing a movie over not seeing it, just so you can decide for yourself!
