The Hangover

2009 comedy

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: A groom-to-be goes to Vegas with two buddies and his future brother-in-law two nights before his wedding. The next morning, groom-to-be Doug is missing, and the other three--now in possession of a baby, a tiger, and a chicken--have no memories of the last twelve hours. They try to piece together the clues to find Doug and get him to his wedding on time.

This isn't a completely awful way to spend nearly two hours. There were a few laughs. I liked the baby, Mike Tyson has a cameo, the brother-in-law was sort of funny, I like that guy from The Office, I like the guy from Community, it was fast paced, and there was a breast or two. A lot of the jokes worked, and some of them worked very well. But a little of this kind of humor goes a long way, and after a while, I got pretty tired of the whole thing. It started ludicrously, managed to get more ludicrous, and then all of a sudden surprisingly got even more ludicrous. That's fine, I suppose. It'll impress the college kids and probably even the high school kids, and they'll have something to text about on their media devices that according to a survey I just read about they spend fifty-three hours per week using. But this curmudgeon, a guy who embarrassingly needs at least a half an hour to type out and send the rare one or two sentence text, started feeling like somebody was hitting him with a rubber mallet. Probably a rubber mallet that smells like urine. The oppressive soundtrack didn't help. There were so many songs in this movie that the soundtrack has to be three or four compact discs. And they were all loud songs, too. I have to go to bed now.

5 comments:

l@rstonovich said...

I liked this one, I've also live a third of my life with a hangover though. I'm a big fan of the beard guy, he has a funny show "Between Two Ferns w/ Zach Galifinakas" where he makes his guests really uncomfortable.

Shane said...

So are you hinting that I would have problems connecting with this story and these characters because I've never had a hangover?

I wonder if any critic saw this movie and used the words "subtle charm" in a review...

Anonymous said...

I bought this movie and "G-Force" just before Christmas.

In the checkout line I noticed that both movies stared Zach Galifinakas.

My mistake was keeping G-Force for myself and giving The Hangover to my 5 year old nephew.

Zach Galifinakas' stand up is interesting as well, and that's why I picked it up. I also like "Ferns".

The Hangover was a "Dude, Where's Your Car" for thirtysomethings. Which is a movie I have been petitioning my congressmen for.

I also petion them for a remake of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" starting the Jonas Bros. and the gay kid on Glee.

Shane said...

Well, I hoped your nephew liked this one. Sadly, I don't think I'll ever be seeing 'G-Force' or 'Dude, Where's My Car'...who knows though? It could accidentally happen.

cory said...

I expected this to be another Apatow-type movie based on a lot of cringe humor (scenes where people repeatedly embarassing themselves the point of making me cringe is supposed to be funny). I was pleasantly suprised that this was not the case with "The Hangover". It is flawed (why wouldn't the guy stuck a hundred feet up yell loudly or at least be there when the authorities got the bed for example), but I really liked the overall fun tone, and most of the humor worked. You mention a few examples, but my favorite moment might have been when the naked Asian guy sprung from the trunk and leg-locked the guy's head. The soundtrack didn't bother me and I thought the 1:40 didn't drag. I wasn't expecting anything out of this, but got a lot of laughs and smiles. A 14.