Loud; chaotic and only periodically funny, "The Hangover" bets big but cannot cash out.

Rating: 5/10 (11 August 2017)

Do not expect to see anything 'new' in "The Hangover", which is played for good, old-fashioned bawdy belly laughs. It has no real plot, although is very easy to pitch; possesses very little in the way of characterisation, although lots of people are frequently coming and going from the frame, and on top of everything else, does not seem to have a single thing to say on any particular issue whatsoever. We have already experienced quite a lot of what transpires here in an "American Pie" film, or some such other contemporary comedy about adults who should know better. Cameos by famous boxers and maybe a liberal use of various pop songs aside, there is very little actually going on.
Justin Bartha plays Doug, who is about to be married to Tracy (Barrese), in what promises to be a lavish Californian wedding between two people very much in love. In the opening scene, Doug and his brother-in-law to-be Alan (Galifianakis) are sizing up their wedding day apparel: Doug is shaven, handsome, has a good build and looks smart – he's worn suits in the past and he'll wear them again. Alan, by comparison, is flabby; unshaven and childlike – we do not sense he has ever worn a suit in his life, nor that he has ever had many friends.
Ahead of these two men, and before the wedding, is a trip to the Nevada city of Las Vegas, which they are lining up with two more of Doug's friends so as to provide the husband-to-be with a final night of bachelor driven fun and frolics. Of these two men, one is Bradley Cooper's Phil, whom we do not believe for one second is a teacher, while the other is Stuart (Helms), whom we do believe is a dentist and might possess a nice house in a good part of town with a sensible girlfriend who espouses conservative views on gambling and prostitution.
Discounting Alan, who is now family and present by default, we are unconvinced that each of these three men would really meet one another in life and hit it off to the extent they would entrust one another on a booze-cruise to Vegas. The film is not especially interested in who any of these people really are or what they think, just that Phil is very bohemian and aggressive; Stu is ultra-defensive due to a white-lie he has told his partner about going in the first place; Doug seems to be a kind of 'glue' which keeps everything from falling apart and that Alan is a little retarded.
Once in Las Vegas, the night out gives way to a morning after characterised by a wrecked hotel room and a total lack of memory of what happened. The major problem is that Doug did not wake up in the hotel suite with them. Consumed with panic, the three take to the daytime streets of Vegas on whatever meagre clues they have as they frantically try to piece together just what it was they did last night.
The set up allows the film to 'drop' various things on us which we might not otherwise find funny, such as a police car matching their valet ticket; two gangsters popping out of nowhere with baseball bats ready to do serious damage and a nude gentleman jumping out of a car boot. Other films would need to depict why these things are as they are, and would thus lose a lot of impact.
"The Hangover" is not without one or two genuine laughs, with the very sudden homage to "Rain Man" being one of them and a very amusing scene of confusion whereby an exchange with some unruly gangsters returns the 'wrong' Doug. Yet the overriding item permeating throughout is the strange sense of disassociation we feel as Phil; Alan and Stuart charge around various hotspots looking for the groom while essentially trying to save their own skins from various wives and in-laws finding out: Do we care if they find Doug, or that he gets to the wedding? Who is anybody in this film anyway? Why does any of this even matter in the first place?
Prior to their losing him, care is taken to set up a series of items which exist to then later be knocked down: Stuart's girlfriend, Melissa, hates Las Vegas and thinks he's gone to a winery; the gang's mode of transportation is an antique silver Mercedes lent to Doug by his fiancé's father, while Stuart's ring belonged to his grandmother, who survived Hitler's Final Solution. Are we surprised, or even amused, when any of these delicately poised things become tarnished or threatened by the chaos which begins to unfold around our leads?
The Hangover's director is Todd Phillips, who wrote 2006's "Borat" and before that directed "Road Trip". He later made "Due Date" in 2010, and "The Hangover" very much falls into line with that 'Phillips-ian' road movie-comedy-perpetual chaos 'aesthetic' which he seems to enjoy penning and making. "Borat" was often very funny because of the outlandishness of the central character and what he had to say to real people in real situations. "Road Trip" was about someone who had to learn to appreciate what he had, while "Due Date" depicted somebody learning to accept those different to him.
"The Hangover" isn't really about anything or anyone. Its opening montage of Vegas set to the gloomy tones of Bill Withers, followed by a shot of the four roadside and looking pretty desperate, seem to set something up on the nature of Vegas, but by the end the consensus seems to be that it's a pretty darned great place to go and that pole dancers make for better wives than conservatives. Once it's finished, we have seen a series of moderately unfunny scenes of no real order or coherence; have laughed maybe twice and been offended at least once. Skipping this particular Hangover is advisable.