REVIEW: THE HANGOVER PART 2

My Rating:

The Hangover was an awesome, fast-paced, raunchy and all around good comedy. Fearing to break that winning strategy, The Hangover Part 2 is a lockstep duplication of the original and for that reason this movie fails almost completely. Warning, there are spoilers below the jump.





This time around we find Stu (Ed Helms) getting married to a Thai woman by the name of Lauren (Jamie Chung) in Thailand. Phil (Bradley Cooper), Doug (Justin Bartha) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are all in attendance for the wedding, in addition to Lauren's 16 year old brother, Teddy (Mason Lee). Opting for a simple bachelor party Stu, the Wolf Pack and Teddy all have a beer and marshmallows on the beach. The next morning Phil, Stu and Alan wake up in a seedy hotel room in Bangkok to find Teddy's finger, but no Teddy. Now cue everything that happened in the first movie! It is a race to find out what happened the previous night to find Teddy.

Every major plot point from the first movie finds it's way in to this sequel. As a result, anyone who is familiar with the first movie will be one step in front of this movie. Which is a shame because that is what made the first movie so great. The audience was just as clueless as the guys as they pieced together the events of their crazy night. Lets go through The Hangover checklist shall we? Exotic stolen animal? Check, this time around its a drug-dealing monkey. Stu falls in love with a hooker? Check, this time the hooker has a penis... yep. Brush in with the law? Check. Trouble with gangsters? Check. Alan drugs the guys? Check. Mr. Chow springs out from something to attack the Wolf Pack? Check, this time it is an ice-cooler. Mike Tyson? Check. Last minute epiphany to save the day? Check. Can you see a pattern here? None of this stuff is new, the writers just changed some of the details but left the larger structure of the movie exactly the same.


The same goes for the characters in the movie, there is nothing new, just amped up versions of the characters from the first movie. Phil is still a douche, Alan is still crazy, and Stu is still a stick in the mud. There is really no character development what so ever in this movie. The best character moment in the movie happens at the very end of the movie with Stu and Lauren's Father. 


Since this was a comedy, I should devote some time to talking about the jokes. I think I have boiled the jokes down into three categories: Alan jokes, references to the first movie, and Thai penis. I would say for about the first half hour, almost all of the jokes were references to the first movie. A few jokes referencing the first movie would have been fine, but it seemed like the movie was constantly winking and saying, "Hey this has happened before! Oh boy isn't it funny a second time!?" Well you know what movie? No, it isn't so stop telling me about shit from the first movie because I have already seen it; if I wanted a good laugh about what happened in the first movie I would have watched the first movie. The last category of jokes are all about shock factor, they aren't so much funny as they are, "oh my did that just happen!" These jokes primarily involve full frontal Asian male nudity. Hey what's that over on the floor? BAM! It's Mr. Chow's penis! Hey that hooker is a little strange. BAM he/she has a penis! PENIS!

My biggest qualm with this movie has to be the plot point about Teddy losing a finger. No one cared that he lost a finger! Teddy didn't even care that he lost a finger! He just shrugged it off at the end of the movie as if it was no big deal. WTF I'm calling bullshit on that one. Was it even necessary for him to lose a finger?

So was this movie funny? Sure, at times. Did I enjoy it? Meh, not really. Should you go see it? Probably not, but that won't stop you from seeing it. The Hangover Part 2 has already made over 100 million dollars, so I can almost guaranty that there will be a third movie (which I am guessing will take place in Amsterdam). And why shouldn't there be a third? The studio is making a butt-load off a movie that we have basically seen already, keep that money train a rollin'. 

Released: May, 2011
Length: 1 hr 42 min
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Written by: Craig Mazin, Scot Armstrong, Todd Phillips

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong

Rating: R