Not bad, just.... nothing new

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2011)

When a movie is as much of a mega smash hit as The Hangover was in 2009, you can pretty much tell as soon as the credits start rolling that the movie will have a sequel. And that can be a good or bad thing; a sequel can further develop the characters you loved from the first and tell a whole new story, or it can regurgitate whatever made the first so great and just add new words. The Hangover, Part II is the latter.
In part II, the boys are going to Thailand for Stu's wedding and wake up realizing they lost his bride's little brother. Sound familiar? The Hangover part II is very similar to the first one, right down to it starts out almost the exact same way with everyone wondering where they are and Phil calling Doug's wife Tracy. The main difference between this one and the first one (other than it takes place in Thailand) is that the jokes go from funny to uncomfortable to watch. Instead of waking up and discovering one of them lost a tooth, they wake up to find the severed finger of the guy who is missing. Instead of getting tasered in the nuts, Phil gets shot in the arm. Instead of stealing a police car, they've kidnapped a monk. The jokes that made you laugh in the first one makes you feel sorry for them in this one. I'm not saying this movie was entirely bad, Bradley Cooper is still gorgeous (sue me, I'm a girl and that's my main draw for seeing these movies) and there are still some jokes that you can laugh at. I'm saying that they felt the need to rehash or bring in as much from the first one as they could, like Mike Tyson is randomly on the stage rapping at the end, and the movie ends with them looking at pictures from the night before. It makes me hope there is no Hangover III, but I think that would be impossible as the only one left to get hitched is Alan and who sees that happening?