Good plotting, but not as funny as the trailer.

Rating: Null/10 (22 March 2010)

I enjoyed this daft comedy well enough, but it isn't the funniest film to recently come out of Hollywood – in fact it would probably struggle to make it into the top three even though it serves up a regular supply of laughs. I suppose that's the trouble with funny trailers – they tend to be a double-edged sword because they draw the people into the cinema but fail to achieve the level of laughs suggested by the trailer that many might expect. The film follows the misadventures of a group of average guys on the stag night of one of them who goes missing following a night that none of them can remember. The guys wake up in their trashed penthouse villa with monster hangovers and discover a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in a cupboard.
I liked the fact that the guys here weren't sex-crazy teens but thirty-somethings with the attendant baggage a few more years under the belt inevitably brings, even though it fails to sidestep some clichéd situations. The film goes out of its way to undermine preconceived notions: the funny cops are also sadistic and vindictive, the outwardly respectable girlfriend is a foul-mouthed harridan who cheats on her partner while the seasoned Vegas stripper/escort is a sweet girl, Mike 'ear-biter' Tyson (who I feel comfortable saying is looking decidedly porky these days, seeing as he is more than an ocean's distance away from me as I type this) is a good guy, the vicious villain is camp and weedy, and so on. It's no doubt a strategy to keep things fresh, and it works for the most part. The four friends make a likable bunch, even as they bicker and fight, and the mystery at the core of the film means that the pace only occasionally flags.