The Hangover Part II
It’s not fun to pile on. If you haven’t witnessed it for yourself, chances are you’ve heard “mixed things” (putting it kindly) about “The Hangover Part II” and I’ll confirm what you probably already know, it’s not a very good movie. I didn’t think the original film was a comedy classic or anything but it was at the least, very funny and a great launching pad for Zach Galifianakis (who I’d been loosely following since his VH1 days). The second movie is yes, a complete note-for-note recreation of the first film but darker and without most of the laughs. For starters, it’s almost impossible to imagine the laziness that went into crafting the screenplay that transplants every detail of the first film into the new one. We’re not watching these characters on a new adventure, we’re watching them relive the same nightmare in a new setting. It’s like the next episode of a terrible procedural show like C.S.I., except you just paid $13 to watch it.
Bradley Cooper (who I was a fan of in his “Alias” days) is now portraying a charisma-free asshole who I’m assuming is supposed to be the hero (to frat boys, maybe?) Ed Helms does the best he can with the material and Galifianakis gets off a dozen or so one-liners but they’re hardly worth sitting through the long stretches of the film that are devoid of laughs. Todd Phillips remade the first film as a darker, grosser version of itself but he seemed to forget that he was making a comedy wherein it’s supposed to be funny. I’m not sure anyone who is interested in this film can be dissuaded from seeing it and while it’s not a terrible, excruciating experience it’s an ugly, lazy, mostly unfunny one. If you watched the trailer and wondered why they weren’t showing any of the funny parts, it’s because there really weren’t any in the film. But don’t listen to me, Videogum really says it best.
