Galifianakis saves this film from being a complete disaster

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2014)

Alan has been off his medication for the last 6 months resulting in his behaviour becoming increasingly erratic. Following the death of Alan's father, the Wolf pack and Alan's family create an intervention and decide that Alan should get treatment for his current mental issues. Whilst they are on their way to the clinic, the Wolf pack are forced off the road and bundled into the back of a lorry. It turns out that their old mate Chow has ripped off a big time gangster called Marshall. Marshall kidnaps Doug and tells our hapless trio that they must find Chow and bring him in otherwise Doug will be killed.
Even though this was a fairly sub standard sequel, I do think that it at least deserves some credit for trying to create a somewhat original plot - the second film was lazy and essentially re-hashed the same story as we saw in the first film. Whilst, it's good that there was some originality in this third film there were still some problems with this third entry in the franchise....
This film is much darker than the previous two films and as a result it is a lot less fun - the first film was well-written, incredibly funny, and the chemistry between the three leads was great. To me, that was another thing that was missing; the chemistry between the 3 leads felt almost absent in this film - they were almost acting like they'd never worked together before.
There is one aspect of the plot that doesn't make sense which I can only put down to a piece of truly dreadful writing; Chow convinces the Wolfpack to break into a house which he claims was his house, but it ended up being sold off when he was sent to prison. Chow knows the house like the back of his hand, knows how to disable the alarms and knows that there is $21 million worth of gold bars hidden behind a brick wall. The twist with this is that it wasn't his house and that he never owned it as the Wolfpack had assisted Chow in breaking into Marshall's house (the gangster who has tasked them with bringing Chow to him). OK, a few things puzzle me; if Chow never lived there, how did he know that the gold was buried behind the wall? How did he know how to disable the alarm? How did he know the lay-out of the inside of the house? Why did he need the Wolf pack to help him? Unless his intention was merely to frame them. This twist seems clever at first, but the more I thought about it, the more stupid I realised it actually was.
There is one big positive to take from this and that's Galifianakis; he's always been a bit daft, but being off his medication has made him more daft than usual and I must admit it's this daftness that does rescue this film from being a complete catastrophe. His child-like exuberance was a joy to watch and he also managed to be funny in a subtle and charming way. He's daft but he's also quite endearing (compare his performance to that of Ken Jeong who was over the top and irritating).
There are some laughs to be found in this film, but not enough in my book. As mentioned, the writers deserve some acknowledgement as they have at least tried to take the franchise in a slightly different direction. At the end of the day though it's a pretty poor film that is only really saved slightly by Galifianakis.