Awful beyond words

Rating: 1/10 (10 December 2011)

I'm astonished by the high ratings and the positive feedback this movie has been getting. The characters are unlikeable, childish and brash while still remaining painfully uninteresting and generic. Their drunken adventures are so over the top you can't help but shaking your head and wonder what the writers and the producers were on when they green-lighted such a mess of a movie. I mean, we expect outlandish adventures from four drunken guys in Vegas, but what they go through in the movie is so ridiculous it requires an insane amount of suspension of disbelief to vaguely buy into the possibility of such events happening.
Or are we supposed to believe you can pretty much thrash a very expensive suite at the Ceasar's Palace without getting caught? Nobody asked questions about the bed on the roof? And since when can you sneak a freaking TIGER in and out of a luxury hotel without anyone noticing? Not to mention the stolen police car and the ludicrous taser scene.
But all those loopholes could have been forgiven had the movie been genuinely funny. Instead it was a predictable sequence of trite gags and jokes so old even your 9-years-old cousin has already heard them before. The only "first" in the movie is the cringeworthy baby-is-masturbating gag, repeated TWICE in case you missed it the first time or didn't find it offensive enough. Stay classy!
The characters have no redeeming qualities so there's no empathy and it's really hard to care about them finding the missing friend, making it back to the wedding or dying in the middle of the desert.
A special mention to Zach Galifianakis'es character: seriously, the moronic and awkward man-child isn't funny, it's just annoying. The fascination Hollywood has with such character is baffling, although probably it represents a fair portion of the core audience for unfunny and inane flicks like The Hangover.
Bottom line: if you're not into low-quality 4th grade toilet humour and/or into road trips involving adults with a mental age lower than their shoe size just avoid this movie.
Or use it as the measuring stick for your friends' skills in movie-recommending. If some of them speaks highly of The Hangover never follow his advice about another movie. Ever.