Promising Start but becomes far too absurd to take seriously

Rating: 3/10 (2 January 2010)

It's not often that I start out laughing hysterically and then wish I had not bothered wasting two hours on a movie. But that is exactly what happened for me with the Hangover. The basic notion of the movie had so much promise. When the gang wakes up in their incredible hotel suite at noon after the night of all nights before, with the groom missing, a full grown tiger in the bathroom, a crying baby in the closet, evidence that one of the groomsmen got married to a prostitute, body piercing, missing teeth, a mattress from the hotel room on top of one of the Ceasars' Palace statues and absolutely no memory of how any of this happened, I thought we were in for one hell of a movie. Oh how wrong could I have been! Everything went down hill from here. The implausible valet parked stolen police car, the baby sat normally in the back of the police car with a regular seat belt whilst the gang mounts the Vegas sidewalk at speed just to get out of traffic, the Gangsters with guns who do little more than threaten verbally, the ridiculous on-going escapades with Mike Tyson's Pet Tiger, the MIT blackjack team impersonation from just 15 minutes reading a book on card counting that conveniently results in winning $82,000 to pay back a debt of $80,000, the police tazar gun demo on the gang by the local cops in front of participating school children, and the mid-drive interstate delivery of tuxedos that conveniently fit perfectly. I really wish someone would redo this movie and take the initial premise and make it darker and believable. I'm amazed that the ratings are so high for what I feel was one of the worst movie's of the year, if not the decade!