The Hangover (2009) – on rental. There were a couple of things during our wedding 3.5 years ago that I didn’t want to make a big deal of. One was that whole ‘buying of the bride’ that a lot of bridesmaids have fun at at the bridegroom’s expense – and on that, my best man back then, Matt, has a story to tell about taking the bullet for me!
But there was another such wedding event that I had zero interest in, and that was the Bachelor’s Party. Maybe it’s just not that big a thing in this part of the world, but it sure is a curious phenomenon elsewhere. The Hangover is a story about one such party when four friends – the bridegroom among them – head out to Las Vegas 48 hours before the wedding for a last night out, but wake up the next morning to see their $4200 a night hotel suite ripped to shreds, a hooker sneaking out, a baby in the wardrobe, and Mike Tyson’s tiger in the bathroom.
If that wasn’t enough, the bridegroom is missing… 24 hours before the wedding LOL The rest of the film sees the three retracing their footsteps in Las Vegas trying to figure out what on earth happened before they all passed out dead drunk the night before.
There’s a lot of crass humor and (male) nudity in The Hangover, but little of it feels forced or included for showmanship, except OK maybe one scene involving an Asian mob boss who’s found naked in the three’s car trunk. It’s simply an adult comedy involving adults in the aftermath of a wild Bachelor’s Party that’s gone all wrong.
I think what worked in the film is the sincerity of both the story and that the three friends are all likable in their own way. The three have no clue what happened the day before as they can’t remember a thing, but in their journey they meet people who do remember who they are. It’s mind games abound, mixed with a lot of flesh, bodily fluids, liquor and drugs.
While there are four leads in The Hangover, the lion’s share of time goes to three of them, and two of the three play familiar types. There’s Phil, the jock and apparent leader of the four, and who relishes the opportunity to sink his teeth into the city of sin. There’s Stu, a dentist who’s henpecked by his fiancee and to whom he has to lie and say their party is in wine country; and Alan, a socially inept soon to be brother-in-law of the bridegroom, Doug, whose presence is semi-limited to the first and last acts of the film.
The Hangover doesn’t quite descend to the low rungs of Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat, but I can still imagine Ling going purple with horror at the sort of crazy depravity in the film. It’s also gratifying – at some level at least – that an adult comedy like this can make it to our shores in a otherwise normally prudish Singapore, and on home rental even too. The film was a huge financial success at the box office, and was critically praised by reviewers on aggregate sites. It gets a recommendation from me, but only if you can laugh at the sort of adult situations abound in this film.:)
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