The Hangover

When The Hangover came out, I didn’t see it right away. This was a movie that everyone was raving about and quoting lines from it. For a long time, this was the highest grossing Rated R film of all time and everyone I knew was obsessed with it. People were quoting lines I could not place and they were just spouting off lines from this movie like it was the holy grail of hilarious movies. And the first time I watched it… I was a little bored.

Looking back at it now, I think I made a couple of mistakes when watching this movie the first time. I’m pretty sure I watched it alone. The second mistake I made was believing all the hype about this movie. If you go into a movie thinking its going to be the funniest movie ever, or if someone you don’t like thinks this movie is hilarious, you already have a bias against it. So yeah, the first time I saw The Hangover I was a little bit bored by it. And then I saw the second one and I sold every interest I had in ever seeing these movies again. Not only was I bored by the first one, I felt cheated that I went to the second one just to see the exact same thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever see the second one again, but I’m pretty sure all I’m going to do is put a link to this review and say, it’s the exact same movie. And I don’t even know what the third one is, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist… (at least not until I decide to review it)

But when I was on vacation this past week, I was getting ready to go out and the Hangover came on the television. I was watching it with my friends and even with the censored version on, I found myself laughing pretty hard at the jokes. I decided that when I got home, I knew I had a free copy laying around, I thought I’d throw it in and give it one more shot.

The Hangover follows the story of 4 guys heading out to a bachelor party for the groom to be, Doug Billings (played by Justin Bartha). His groomsmen include his friends Phil (played by Bradley Cooper) a teacher who is all around a bit of an asshole, and Stuart (played by Ed Helms) a dentist who is in a very abusive relationship with his girlfriend. Joining them is his strange brother in law Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis) who he feels obligated to bring along despite his very odd quirks. They have the plan to bring Doug out to Las Vegas to have one last unforgettable night two days before his wedding. The funny part about this film is that they get to Las Vegas, they’re about to go out for the night, they make a few speeches and they have a drink before they set out. And then the movie cuts to the next morning.

Phil, Stuart, and Alan all wake up in a trashed hotel room. Stuart wakes up without a tooth, Alan finds a baby in the closet, and they all find a tiger in the bathroom. But most importantly, they cannot find Doug. At first, they chalk it up to just one crazy night where they drank too much that they can’t remember anything and Doug is somewhere fine. But the more they delve into the events of the previous night, they start to figure out that there is more to that night and Doug is straight up missing. The rest of the night is the three of them following a bread crumb trail of clues from the night before and they try and figure out where they were, what they did, and most importantly, find Doug in time to get him back to Los Angeles and get married.

Even when I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie, I did think it was a really creative and fun idea. Obviously not an idea that you needed to do again… and then a third time, but for a single comedy, this really played well. Everyone has had, or knows someone who has woke up the next morning after a long night of drinking and had no memory of the night before. This is that just brought to the 10^th degree as they start to realize they ran into some shady people the night before.

The most fun part of the movie is that you’re right there with the main characters trying to figure out what happened to these guys and what the night actually looked like. There are so many fun hints and clues that they leave and then slowly throughout the movie they dole out the answers to your questions. Even at the end of the movie when they find a camera with the evidence of what they did the previous night, you’re still not totally clear of what happened and that is kind of the fun part of the movie.

But these are all things that I could have noticed and still thought the movie wasn’t funny right? Well yeah, but after a little bit of time to shed the stigma and the expectation that EVERYONE was obsessed with this movie, I actually listened to some of the jokes and its actually a really funny script!

To me, a lot of this movie just feels genuine and original. It doesn’t have exactly a distinct style of humor, its just three guys unraveling a mystery and a lot of funny things happen to them. The people they run across are really funny and it’s a lot of fun to imagine them doing all these crazy things just plastered the night before. They could have easily done flashbacks showing exactly what happened but it’s almost funnier just staying there with the three of them and having the night unravel to you the same way it is to them.

The humor is raunchy, its crude, its definitely a rated R comedy. But there’s a reason that Deadpool and Ted are really the only movies that have topped The Hangover and that’s because Rated R comedies need to be done right. And The Hangover does it right.

It also might have helped to watch this movie 7 years later because I am now aware of the kind of humor these actors bring and where their strengths are. This movie would not have succeeded if it wasn’t for the three main actors, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zack Galfianakis. They’re the kind of people that you know just had fun doing this movie and it shows in their performance.

They all bring their own kind of humor to the movie. Bradley Cooper very much plays the straight man because… well he’s Bradley Cooper. He’s too good looking to be anything other than the straight man. However, he’s also an incredible asshole and so he’s not boring. Too many times the straight man in movies like this are just there to be the straight man and be a vehicle for the audience. But in this movie, Cooper actually felt like he had his own character and he wasn’t just the good looking one.

Then you’ve got Ed Helms who of course has really grown into his own since this movie and The Office. I don’t think I was a huge fan of him when I first saw this movie but I think after seeing some of his work since, I really have enjoyed his tempo and type of humor that he just becomes hilarious in this movie. An example of how refreshing and original the humor is in this movie is when he just gets on a piano and sings the Doug song. That’s the example of something that would only work if it was done by Ed Helms, and just how refreshing the movie feels sometime.

And then you have Zack Galifianakis. The Hangover wasn’t his film debut but it might as well have been. This was the movie that launched his career and made him the actor that he is today. Now even after a second viewing where I actually was laughing pretty hard, I still don’t really love Galifianakis and his other work. I’m kind of lukewarm on him. He’ll do something like Between Two Ferns which I think is funny but not side splitting funny and then I have moments where I feel like he’s just doing the awkward bearded guy he was in The Hangover again.

I’m planning on seeing Keeping Up with the Joneses this weekend so if I do I can definitely see if he’s still doing the same shtick.

However, keeping in mind that this was the first time he did that shtick, I really do enjoy Alan in this movie. He’s funnier if you’re looser and you’re watching this movie with friends, but I do think it’s pretty funny.  

Like I said before, the supporting cast from the hooker that Stuart ends up marrying while drunk played by Heather Graham, to Ken Jeong playing a flamboyant Chinese gangster, it’s a really solid cast. The fun thing I’m noticing about this cast is that it was actually pretty conservative with the really well known actors being involved. As much as it was fun to see a lot of cameos in movies like Popstar, its interesting going back to a time when Rob Riggle wasn’t that well known and he was brought on because he was funny, not because he was Rob Riggle. Nothing against Rob Riggle, its just an example. It seems too often that comedies are banking off things being funny when they bring in a celebrity cameo instead of just getting someone new to be funny.

Here’s the example. In Popstar, Justin Timberlake had a cameo as the chef. Don’t get me wrong, it was really funny to see Justin Timberlake in that role because it’s funny to point that out and Justin Timberlake is a funny dude. But I think what happened with people in The Hangover was they grabbed a couple actors who weren’t unknowns but hadn’t quite popped yet, and just helped that progression. Both methods are funny, but I kind of enjoy seeing new faces and still laughing my ass off, because they’re funny, not because I just recognize them.

The biggest complaint I have about The Hangover really isn’t about the movie itself. It’s a pretty original and creative storyline and even if I’m having a day where I don’t think it’s funny, I can still recognize when a movie is structured well. The issues I have was the sequels that spawned from The Hangover. I think the big stigma I had put on that movie was that I resented it for starting a trend of just creating a sequel and doing the exact same thing.

Sequels can be hard. It’s hard to take a concept that was really funny to begin with and make it totally different and make it as funnier if not funnier since that’s what people expect. But with the Hangover sequels, they took the exact same concept, put it in Bangkok, and really didn’t change anything. I remember being angry coming out of that movie saying I paid to see a movie I could just find online for free.

I won’t talk too much more about The Hangover sequels because I’m thinking I should probably save that for another day, but my issue was that the people found gold in this first project and didn’t really know what to do with it after they had got it. And in a way it does make me a little bit angry and resentful of the first movie for starting that.

But overall, The Hangover is a fun time. You really have to take separately from its sequels though or else you get the bias that I ended up having for a couple of years. But now, I’m feeling a little bit of a Hangover revitialization… or maybe that’s just me because I just watched it. Anyways, I really enjoyed the Hangover and you should definitely check it out. I’d wait until I do a review on the sequels to move in on those if you haven’t seen them already but if you haven’t seen The Hangover yet and you like raunchy crude humor, go for it.

But those are my thoughts on The Hangover, even if they are 7 years late. What are your thoughts on The Hangover? What’s your favorite line from the movie? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I’ll leave you with this.  One of the funniest parts from the movie is the Doug song and here that song is. Enjoy!