“10: The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.”
- Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses
Comedy happens when somebody gets exactly what they deserve. Tragedy happens when bad things befall good people. If you do not have the ability to grasp this very simple basic difference than you might just be one of the makers of “The Hangover: Part 2,” a movie that discards nearly everything that made Part I a superior comedy and leaves behind a mess of awkwardness, unpleasantness, and a story that, if it took place in the real world, would be really sad.
The original conceit of the first Hangover movie was nothing short of brilliant. Four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning, Alan (played by Zach Galifinakis), Stu (played by Ed Helms), and Phil (played by Bradley Cooper) wake up in a trashed hotel room with disastrous hangovers. The groom is missing and nobody can remember where they lost him. But there are several clues around: a hospital band, a receipt from an ATM, a tiger, a chicken, a baby, and a police car. The rest of the movie concerns the three trying to piece together the mystery and meeting many different comic characters along the way. “The Hangover: Part II” follows this formula but in a vastly inferior way. This time it is Stu getting married. The wedding is taking place in Thailand. A couple of nights before the wedding, the four guys plus the bride’s 16-year-old nephew, Terry, have one beer by a campfire. Stu, Alan, and Phil wake-up the next morning with disastrous hangovers in a vagrant apartment in Bangkok and Terry is missing. But instead of a multitude of clues there is but two, a monkey and a severed finger. Both are dead ends and don’t lead to anything. In fact, whenever a clue or lead is finally brought to light it is usually entirely explored in the very next scene. Thus, there is very little mystery to Part II and that is a huge problem both in terms of the movie’s pace and comedy.
One of the more brilliant things about the first movie’s structure was the way it efficiently set up subplots. A clue was shown at the beginning and this gave the movie an excuse to switch tracks from one comic situation to another via some hilarious shock moments. Some good examples are the cops busting into a room, Mike Tyson waiting for the guys in their hotel room, or an Asian gang purposefully ramming the guys’ car. These moments don't exist in Part II because nothing is ever set up. So instead of quick comical transitions we are left with the guys walking around in depressed moods to locations that seem arbitrarily chosen. This movie isn't nearly as intelligent nor as interesting to watch unfold.
But this wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem if the movie were funny. And this is where “The Hangover Part II” inexplicably fails consistently. For one thing, all the characters have turned into jerks. The most notable transformation is Alan. What was a very funny weird but well-meaning oddball in the first movie has turned into a total asshole. He is mean to his parents, his friends, and most notably to Terry, who hasn’t done anything to deserve all the insults. This isn't funny. It's awkward. Generally speaking, a movie should make the audience like the good people in the story and dislike the bad. That way the movie is enjoyable when good stuff happens to the good people and bad stuff happens to the bad. (You would think that this would go without saying). But here there is no difference between the good and bad. They are all assholes. This goes for all the side characters in the sub-plots as well. Where Part I had some variability in the types of people the guys met (like say sweetheart Mike Tyson, heart of gold hooker Heather Graham, macho cop Rob Riggle, the annoyed doctor, etc.) everyone in Part II seems to be slightly different versions of the same jerk. The tattoo guy is a jerk. The Buddhist Monks are jerks. The drug dealers are jerks. The father-in-law is a jerk. The crime boss, played by Paul Giamatti, is a huge snarling screaming jerk. Nobody seems to be having any fun. Even the flashbacks of the night before don't show anybody having fun. The one exception is Mr. Chow, played once again by Ken Jeong, and he’s dead for half the movie. The story takes place almost entirely in a dank cesspool of inner city Bangkok. Everything is the color of puke. The funniest lines are spoken by Alan and these are mostly non-sequitors. You know a comedy is in trouble when the best jokes are funny precisely because they have nothing to do with the storyline.
The director Todd Phillips has always been very skilled at casting groups of comedians with different comic styles (Road Trip, Old School, Starsky and Hutch). In the first Hangover he hit the motherlode with the oddball Galifinakis, the neurotic Helms, and the laid back Bradley Cooper. The three played off each other very well. This was especially true whenever things would get too crazy. At that point the movie could depend on Cooper to be a relaxing agent. They wake up in a trashed hotel room. “Looks like we had a bit of fun last night,” Cooper wryly remarks, hardly worried. A valet brings around a cop car instead of their Rolls Royce. Cooper volunteers to drive it, not missing a beat. In Part II, this dynamic falls apart completely and the main reason is that Cooper can’t realistically be a relaxing agent without sounding like an uncaring asshole. The situations the guys find themselves in are far too serious. Do you understand the comedic difference between getting tasered as a punishment for stealing a cop car as opposed to getting shot for no reason whatsoever? Do you understand the difference between a very bad sunburn and a permanent face tattoo? Or how about the difference between cheating on an unfaithful shrew of a girlfriend by accidentally marrying Heather Graham as opposed to cheating on your faultless fiancé via sodomy with a transvestite prostitute? If you do, then I would argue you have a much keener understanding of what is funny and what is not than the makers of this movie. There is a very telling scene in this movie as far as the audience’s laughter level in the theater with me was concerned. It dealt with Stu’s father-in-law giving a toast. It starts with a couple of insults at Stu’s expense, which the audience definitely laughed at. It goes on for several more insults, each one drawing less laughter than the one before. And then the toast just keeps on going for much longer than the movie needed to make absolutely clear that the father-in-law isn’t telling jokes at all. Instead, he is expressing outright hatred of his son-in-law and maliciously intends to humiliate him in front of his bride to be, his entire family, and all his friends. By the end of the toast, the audience had stopped laughing. It wasn’t funny. It was just really fucking mean.
The Hangover Part II has made so much money already that I’m sure there is more than enough financial incentive to make Part III. I am of the belief that Part III could still be very funny if it stayed competently faithful to the formula of the first movie. The first step I would think is to hire back the original writers, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and fire the hacks they hired to write this one.
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