it's like Sex and The City, but for guys...
The first thing that hit me the moment I saw four guys preparing for a wedding (which immediately sent off the "eye-rolling/groaning-plot-line-alarm-bells) was - "somebody/or group is going to be involved in some sort of messed up romantic adventure where one person is the "lady/man in waiting", while everybody else becomes the satellite planets out of orbit", and well, i was right. And so begins The Hangover...
Sure, it's a funny film - slapstick and outrageous, but nothing that you would not have expected if you had seen similar "any dude's version of Thelma and Louise" genre films (Pineapple Express anyone?). Adventure comedies are built in with the implication that the viewer suspend his belief and better judgment that: "this is just way too outrageous to happen in real life", for example, the scene where Alan (Zach Galifianakis) stumbles into the bathroom for a (sloppy sleepy morning) pee after a night of intense party-going and finds a tiger lounging on the bathroom floor. Yea, it's not what you would expect, and elicits some laughs in the way Alan has a delayed reaction to it, and by this point in the film, you have been waiting for something "this over the top", but how this (tiger) is used as a vehicle to introduce a pretty gratuitous character that does nothing to drive the plot along, in my opinion, is just lazy. I mean - this is Mike Tyson's Tiger? But most puzzling, is why Mike Tyson?!! This guy has as much presence as a piece of wet cardboard. The BABY has more personality than this 'has been boxing star' and does a hell of a lot more for this picture than what seemed to me as a "superfluous tribute" and an excuse to have bragging rights on the part of the director/producers to say: "Hey! I got Mike Tyson to act in my film - isn't he AWESOME?" But i digress...
Mid point in the film - Alan's character is becoming more charmingly neurotic, Stu (Ed Helms, who in my opinion, is a complete gem in this film, and does a lot to save it from comedic mediocrity) not only loses his tooth, but begins to lose his mind, and Phil (Bradley Cooper) is the ringleader who is trying to keep it all together, and Doug (Justin Bartha) - the groom to be? Well, he's off somewhere, unconscious, being a trivial psedo-main character who is resurrected at the end of the film, and unbenounced to him, saves the day. Throw in a weak cameo appearance from Mike Tyson who plays himself, Jade (Heather Graham), a stripper with a heart of gold, who did a wonderful job at pulling it off, and a few other supporting characters: the lady in waiting - Tracy (Sasha Barrese), the father - Jeffrey Tambor (who is such a brilliant actor, and should have had more than just a few lines in this film, and perhaps, in doing so, might have been able to add more comic oomph with his deadpan humor), Rob Riggle and Rachel Harris), all seem to stumble around in a metaphoric drunken like haze, much as the main characters do throughout the film.
And my main point to this review - is that for me, this film basically comes off as "Sex and the City" for men. It's a feel good buddy film about 4 misfits involuntarily getting into strange compromising situations that inevitably bring them all together as a close knit group of old friends. it worked for Michael Patrick King, why could it not work for "the Hangover"? Alan is a provocative Samathan Jones (modify Samantha's sexuality and transform it into a fearless savant who is the first to take a leap into the outlandish and unknown), Stu is Charlotte, a dizzy, clueless heart-of-gold lost soul who finds inner strength in the end to be true to her/himself, and Phil is Carrie Bradshaw - quirky, yet introspective and logical in an abstract enough sense to see the fuzzy silver lining in what seems to be a drug/alcohol soaked cloud. What about Miranda/Doug? This deadpan, overly analytical low key prototype character punctuates the film, but does not have enough of a "out of the ordinary" personality type to really make them entirely endearing (or give them enough room to be completely over the top, at least not in this film) but manage to be the metaphorical anchor to the dynamic of the foursome.
So in summation, is this film worth seeing just because it is entertaining? Sure - if you don't expect too much of the plot or characters. It does have it's shining moments (Alan's mental calculations at the casino), almost everything that Stu does and says, but the end of the film left me feeling jilted and after the 100 minutes I had invested in this tour de force, was hoping for a neater ending, and was not impressed by how it seemed to be embellished by some loosely stitched together punny/sight gag threads. Save your $ and get something really funny like "Superbad", which in my opinion, is like the gift that keeps on giving, one humorous layer at a time.
The first thing that hit me the moment I saw four guys preparing for a wedding (which immediately sent off the "eye-rolling/groaning-plot-line-alarm-bells) was - "somebody/or group is going to be involved in some sort of messed up romantic adventure where one person is the "lady/man in waiting", while everybody else becomes the satellite planets out of orbit", and well, i was right. And so begins The Hangover...
Sure, it's a funny film - slapstick and outrageous, but nothing that you would not have expected if you had seen similar "any dude's version of Thelma and Louise" genre films (Pineapple Express anyone?). Adventure comedies are built in with the implication that the viewer suspend his belief and better judgment that: "this is just way too outrageous to happen in real life", for example, the scene where Alan (Zach Galifianakis) stumbles into the bathroom for a (sloppy sleepy morning) pee after a night of intense party-going and finds a tiger lounging on the bathroom floor. Yea, it's not what you would expect, and elicits some laughs in the way Alan has a delayed reaction to it, and by this point in the film, you have been waiting for something "this over the top", but how this (tiger) is used as a vehicle to introduce a pretty gratuitous character that does nothing to drive the plot along, in my opinion, is just lazy. I mean - this is Mike Tyson's Tiger? But most puzzling, is why Mike Tyson?!! This guy has as much presence as a piece of wet cardboard. The BABY has more personality than this 'has been boxing star' and does a hell of a lot more for this picture than what seemed to me as a "superfluous tribute" and an excuse to have bragging rights on the part of the director/producers to say: "Hey! I got Mike Tyson to act in my film - isn't he AWESOME?" But i digress...
Mid point in the film - Alan's character is becoming more charmingly neurotic, Stu (Ed Helms, who in my opinion, is a complete gem in this film, and does a lot to save it from comedic mediocrity) not only loses his tooth, but begins to lose his mind, and Phil (Bradley Cooper) is the ringleader who is trying to keep it all together, and Doug (Justin Bartha) - the groom to be? Well, he's off somewhere, unconscious, being a trivial psedo-main character who is resurrected at the end of the film, and unbenounced to him, saves the day. Throw in a weak cameo appearance from Mike Tyson who plays himself, Jade (Heather Graham), a stripper with a heart of gold, who did a wonderful job at pulling it off, and a few other supporting characters: the lady in waiting - Tracy (Sasha Barrese), the father - Jeffrey Tambor (who is such a brilliant actor, and should have had more than just a few lines in this film, and perhaps, in doing so, might have been able to add more comic oomph with his deadpan humor), Rob Riggle and Rachel Harris), all seem to stumble around in a metaphoric drunken like haze, much as the main characters do throughout the film.
And my main point to this review - is that for me, this film basically comes off as "Sex and the City" for men. It's a feel good buddy film about 4 misfits involuntarily getting into strange compromising situations that inevitably bring them all together as a close knit group of old friends. it worked for Michael Patrick King, why could it not work for "the Hangover"? Alan is a provocative Samathan Jones (modify Samantha's sexuality and transform it into a fearless savant who is the first to take a leap into the outlandish and unknown), Stu is Charlotte, a dizzy, clueless heart-of-gold lost soul who finds inner strength in the end to be true to her/himself, and Phil is Carrie Bradshaw - quirky, yet introspective and logical in an abstract enough sense to see the fuzzy silver lining in what seems to be a drug/alcohol soaked cloud. What about Miranda/Doug? This deadpan, overly analytical low key prototype character punctuates the film, but does not have enough of a "out of the ordinary" personality type to really make them entirely endearing (or give them enough room to be completely over the top, at least not in this film) but manage to be the metaphorical anchor to the dynamic of the foursome.
So in summation, is this film worth seeing just because it is entertaining? Sure - if you don't expect too much of the plot or characters. It does have it's shining moments (Alan's mental calculations at the casino), almost everything that Stu does and says, but the end of the film left me feeling jilted and after the 100 minutes I had invested in this tour de force, was hoping for a neater ending, and was not impressed by how it seemed to be embellished by some loosely stitched together punny/sight gag threads. Save your $ and get something really funny like "Superbad", which in my opinion, is like the gift that keeps on giving, one humorous layer at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment