The Third Installment Comes In Third.

Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2013)

Todd Phillips third and final installment to The Hangover franchise is undoubtedly the third best. Its much darker plot takes it from being an comedy driven laugh riot like the others to being a grimy hard action film that struggles to find humor.
The story does not in fact revolve around a hangover like the title and previous movies suggest, but instead opts for an action vibe centered around the search for the infamous Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) character. Chow has stolen money from the wrong guy and it is up to the wolf pack to find him and hand him over before the man after Chow kills Doug (Justin Bartha).
The acting in this installment seemed like it had been put on auto-pilot, the characters seem a little stale and don't share the same lovable chemistry we see in the previous films. The main problem with this movie is that it doesn't feel like it belongs in the franchise. Too many eggs were put into the basket of Ken Jeong as he was made a main character and his style just doesn't work for a full 100 minutes the way it does in the 10-15 minute chunks of the other movies.
All this said, the movie does have some good points, Zach Galifankis is not as fine tuned as he's been in the past but he does create the bulk of the laughs in this one, as he did in the others. Cooper and Helms are also lesser versions of their normal selves but they do occasionally break through with some funny material.
It's darker, less funny, more rude and less of a good time then its predecessors, however it is still nice to see the gang back together one last time. The movie uses a solid soundtrack, decent homages to the other films in the series, and a few laughs to keep it from being a failure and for that it gets a 6.5/10.