Shameful, All-Hands-On-Deck Money Grab

Rating: 2/10 (18 January 2019)

Let's begin by stipulating that the original film - The Hangover - is a lovely tale of prototypical male debauchery, caked in copious volumes of bodily fluids, and told with belly-aching comedic genius. That said, this thing - its snot-nosed sibling, the tellingly-named The Hangover Part II - stokes our worst fears about Hollywood, from our vague notions of which ideologies govern studio decisions right down to our presumptions that many of our adored actors will carelessly sacrifice their bodies of work to squeeze gold from a clear-cut lemon.
Despite our hopes that the sequel would be made bulletproof by its returning cast, The Hangover Part II is Really That Bad. Consumed in a living room full of its prototypical target audience members - GenX white males - not a outward chuckle or guffaw was heard until after the one-hour mark. Finishing the film then led to a few hours of quiet group anger and subsequent cool-down, as everyone bearing witness will surely want those lost hours back at end-of-life.
The Hangover Part II presents the emerging reality that any attempts at a well-crafted sequel - equal in ambition to the first - are often never taken up, and instead are preemptively discarded in favor of a poorly-executed but expedient, get-it-while-its-hot shadow of its previous self.