A slick, empty downer

Rating: 2/10 (16 April 2011)

I was looking forward to this movie, based on some enthusiastic word of mouth from a couple of acquaintances. As I stared at the screen with my expression becoming blank, then black, and without ever laughing out loud, all I could think of was that some movies make you look differently at the people who recommend them. "The Hangover" is a base, empty mess, wrapped in some slick packaging and hype.
I know the party line, from some, but certainly not other, reviews: the movie is a wild, gross-out fun ride that goes down smooth. Quirky buddies try to reconstruct a wild bachelor party night in Las Vegas after they black out and wake up the next day in their trashed hotel suite, with their friend the groom missing. They are a supposedly likable bunch of a weird-acting stoner slob, a dorky dentist with a domineering, unfaithful long-time girlfriend, an irresponsible, self-centered hunk, and a dour boy scout. In their adventures, they encounter colorful characters, like smart-mouth cops, a sleazy owner of a quickie wedding chapel, and Mike Tyson (magically rich, no longer bankrupt, with some canned eccentricities added).
The problem is that the movie does nothing but string together a series of gags -- either crude or violent or both -- that grow more and more depressing the clearer it becomes that everything about the movie is shallow, phony, and cliché. The missing night reconstructed over the course of the movie, with any remaining graphic details gratuitously laid on thick over the end credits, is strikingly unimaginative. (Drunken time with hookers; the drunk, hen-pecked dork marries a single-mom hooker with a heart of gold and then falls for her for real; the awkward slob as genius at cards; the groom swearing renewed, undying devotion to his fiancé; trashing fancy and cop cars; stuck-up, rich parents of the bride, totally wasting Jeffrey Tambor.) As to the mattress tossed from high up down on top of the hotel statue, it is an embarrassing plot contrivance, conveniently to delay finding the groom, that no one investigates until the last minute the source of the damage (including the police or hotel staff, who would know better than anyone that it was a hotel mattress, that none of the hotel windows open, and that hotel cameras would have picked it all up). The rush back to L.A. and happy endings are pat, forced, and uninteresting.
Like a self-indulgent child, the movie wants to have it both ways -- the buddies are supposed to be relatable, down-to-earth guys, yet somehow manage to reserve a $4500/night luxury Vegas "villa," come up with fancy clothes at will, and all have hot-looking girlfriends, wives, fiancés, or families. The movie goes for cheap laughs early on by having the slob say he has to stay away by law from schools and parks, yet later treats his carrying around a baby, even making lewd gestures with its hand, as all part of the fun. The same tendency is true of the film's use throughout of what it calls this "fat man" as a pratfalling, publicly urinating punching bag; turning him into an instant genius at cards; his casual talk about using the drug ecstasy; and the film's use of slurs to describe the dorky dentist. The hunk, portrayed as a jerk and not in the least believable as a "school teacher," suddenly becomes a devoted family man at the end, hanging all over his wife and son and later even carrying his sleeping son over his shoulder while he leers at cell phone pictures taken by one of his buddies of nude women they made out with in Vegas, as well as of the dentist's bloody, stupidly smiling face after drunkenly pulling out one of his front teeth that night on a dare. The movie does not even manage to convey any genuine sense of joy to the adventures, even as it seems to glorify them, including lots of senseless destruction (like trashing hotel rooms and cars, someone getting shot, an effeminate, foul-mouthed Asian beating people with a tire-iron, the tooth-pulling, etc.).
Add to this these points recently made by a print reviewer about the movie: "I didn't think 'The Hangover' was all that funny. It was too choppy, too mean-spirited and too much of an ensemble that didn't fit together as well as it should have." (As to the embarrassingly uncritical pass Roger Ebert gave this movie, like so many others, it only reminds me why I always liked Gene Siskel so much better.) Why sweat any of this? It's about drunken partying, right? Identify with it. Go with the flow. It's not about making sense or taking anything seriously. If that works for you, fine. Maybe this is one of those movies where someone likes almost everything or almost nothing. All a reviewer can do is explain why s/he feels one way or the other. For the reasons discussed, what is bad or weak about the movie so overwhelms anything good about it that the above excuses come across to this reviewer as just a convenient, lame cop-out. A cop-out here for failing to entertain in any meaningful sense of the word and in the process not merely disappointing, but spoiling the time of, plenty of people who were looking forward to a good time at the movies.