Bizarre tale of Bachelor Party revelers' memory loss proves to be sleeper comedy hit of 2009

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2010)

Before seeing 'The Hangover', I heard that it was about some guys who hold a bachelor party in Las Vegas. I was expecting a night of ribaldry, chronicling the bachelor party (along the lines of 'Superbad'--except with the characters being a bit older). But the great thing about 'The Hangover' is that all the action happens AFTER the bachelor party occurs, the next day. It's a tremendously clever idea where the comedy is in the unraveling of the mystery as to what happened to the protagonists during a bachelor party which they cannot recall.
In the Act One setup, we're first introduced to the principals: Doug is about to be married and along with his brother-in-law, the off-the-wall Alan, joined by Doug's buddies, Stu, a dentist, and Phil, an elementary school teacher, decide to go to Las Vegas two days before the wedding for a surreptitious bachelor party. We then cut to five hours before the wedding, with Phil making a desperate call to Doug's fiancé informing her that they've lost Doug and it looks like the wedding is off. Then we flashback to the revelers' arrival at Caesar's Palace in Vegas, where they go up to the hotel roof where loose cannon Alan toasts Doug by cutting himself with a knife—he invites everyone to join in a little blood letting as a sort of initiation rite but the others turn him down as they all think Alan is a little bit off the wall.
The break into Act Two occurs with Alan, Stu and Phil waking up in a trashed hotel room sans Doug. To make matters worse, there's a live tiger in the bathroom, a crying baby in the kitchen and Stu the Dentist is missing a tooth. They go downstairs and give the parking valet a stub, only to have him drive up with a police car, with the valet addressing the bumbling threesome as 'officers' and 'wishing them a good day'.
Soon it becomes clear why Alan, Stu and Phil can't remember anything that happened the night before. Alan thought he was slipping a tab of ecstasy into their drinks but it turns out that it was Rohypnol (aka "Roofies"), a date rape drug, which he bought from a confused drug dealer (also named Doug who later figures in the plot). I'm not sure if I recall the exact sequence of what happens next but basically the three end up at a wedding chapel where they discover that the night before Stu got hitched to a Vegas stripper. They locate her and fortunately she's the baby's mother. When the bumbling buddies return to their hotel room, waiting for them there is Mike Tyson himself along with one of his handlers. It seems that the boys stole Tyson's pet tiger and in a rather amusing scene, drug the tiger and drive it back to Big Mike's mansion. More outrageous obstacles soon are placed in the protagonists' way.
It seems that the night before, Alan was playing craps with a Chinese gangster, Mr. Chow. He ends up taking off with Chow's gambling winnings amounting to $80,000. Chow and his thugs confront Alan, Stu and Phil and reveal that they are holding Doug and demand that they come up with his money or else they'll never see their buddy again. In one of the few long-winded scenes in the film, Alan wins $80,000 by employing card counting techniques while playing blackjack back at the casino. They all drive out to the desert where they give Chow the money but he hands over a black guy named Doug who happens to be the drug dealer who sold Alan the 'roofies'.
We're back at the point where the flashback began toward the beginning of the film. Phil is calling Doug's fiancé informing her that Doug cannot be located and the wedding is off. But suddenly Stu figures it all out. Earlier, the guys had noticed that Doug's mattress was impaled on the obelisk in front of the hotel. He realizes that Doug could not have thrown the mattress from the hotel windows since they don't open—the only conclusion is that they had brought Doug up to the roof the night before and he's been stuck up there since nightfall. All's well that ends well when the prospective groom and his three buddies drive back to Los Angeles just in time for the wedding (in a hilarious scene while they're driving on the highway, they have their tuxedos thrown to them from a tuxedo company van--obviously having ordered the tuxes beforehand from the car, using a cell phone and credit card).
The final scene is one of the best—they discover a digital camera with all the pictures of the groups' hi-jinx the night before. They all agree to look at the pictures once and then erase all of them. As the credits roll, the pictures reveal the machinations of the bumbling threesome during their crazed night out on the town.
Of all the characters, I thought Stu the dentist was the funniest. We finally do find out how he lost that tooth—and the scene where he stands up to his overbearing girlfriend at the film's climax was hilarious. I expected a little more with Alan's character as he was introduced as to be the really crazy one at the beginning—but somehow I wanted him to do even more crazy things at the end. Kudos especially to Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow, the foul-mouthed Chinese gangster, who was truly a hoot!
Some of the jokes in "The Hangover" don't always hit the mark—the bit about the police tasering the hapless trio in front of a bunch of schoolchildren just seemed a little too much. Nonetheless, 'The Hangover' has proved to be the sleeper hit comedy of 2009 with its one welcome bizarre situation after another.