The Hangover (2009) came out this past June and became an instant hit and was being hailed as the summer comedy of 2009. It holds such distinctions of being the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever, breaking the record held by Beverly Hills Cop for nearly twenty-five years. It had Mike Tyson in it. You have heard of this movie if you have not seen this movie if you have not seen this movie multiple times. It was a huge success. I am talking to myself in this review. But no matter--here is what I thought about it, starting with a basic assessment, per my three reasons for wanting to see it: it looked interesting, attention-grabbing, and it had a good actor in it.Was The Hangover interesting? No. Not, it was not. The "We got drunk and forgot about everything we did; lets try to piece it all together" premise has been declared legally dead and, you sirs, have just committed a gross act of necrophilia. What you did was make it look interesting. Very good job of making the trailers look as such. It got you tons of money. But the movie itself was not all that interesting. But...
Was The Hangover attention-grabbing? Hell yes. Absoument. The unbelievable chaos that is created in the lives of the four friends in the movie is way more than a car wreck--wanting to look away while being unable. My girlfriend mused that it was like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the scary stuff removed and being replaced with funny stuff; then it became 21. My feelings is that they read the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Las Vegas Edition and made a movie about it. Either way, it grabs you by your metaphorical testicles and forces you to endure it in its entirety.
For who I wanted to see in the movie, I was referring to Zach Galifinakis. I've been a fan of him since I was in high school and saw his Comedy Central thirty-minute special, and even when Eliza Dushku was talking to dead people (see Tru Calling). I was excited to see him get some decent work--especially such work that grosses ten times its budget. But was he in the right role? No, I don't think he was. The character of Alan was funny, and his style is even kind of matched with Galifinakis, but Galifinakis' style as to always be smart with an odd quirk or dozen, but all around an intelligent human being who occassionally does or says a dimwitted or awkward thing. His role of Alan matched the second part but lacked all the intelligence, saving for the part where he counts cards in black jack. It was the polar opposite of Zach, where he is smart most of the time and quirky less. He did what he could with the role, I guess.
The writing of Jon Lucas, Scott Moore, Todd Phillips, and Jeremy Garelick coupled with Phillips' directing made for a really good show. My problem is that I don't think I was set up properly for it. The movie was horrifying. I wanted to laugh, not be frightened. The things you see happening or about to happen, or narrowly missed is goddamn awful. They're already planning a sequel and I'm terrified to see what happens next time. All the claims that it's the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever is a misnomer--this movie is up there with Funny Games in terms of horror in the way of is if these things were actually happening to you, you would be scared out of your skull. If only for the creepy Asian dude.
-Evan "Dez" O'Connor
