The Movie Only Gives the People What They Want

Rating: 6/10 (13 June 2013)

I honestly don't understand the critical and popular dislike for this most recent installment in the "Hangover" franchise. What exactly were the people expecting from the Wolfpack? The first movie pretty much exhausted most of the comic possibilities this franchise could produce. How many more variations of "the morning after the hangover" as the plot can you expect? I, for one, am glad that this movie dispensed with the whole literal "hangover" as the plot and went ahead with a generic robbery and kidnapping caper instead. The first movie was a stupid, gross-out comedy--did the people expect that such a genre would yield veritable masterpiece sequels?
To those who dislike that Leslie Chow and Alan were given expanded roles, with their characters exaggerated far beyond what they had been in the original: this is typical of franchises! Consider "Happy Days": Fonzie stood out from the rest of the bland characters, and became the central figure. Also consider "Family Matters:" the sitcom was a typical middle-class family with banal problems program until Urkel guest-starred; the producers realized his bizarre character would attract more viewers than the too-normal main characters, and deliberately steered the show from a realistic program into a fantasy involving time machines and Urkelbots. This is what "The Hangover" producers did with Chow and Alan: they are trying to turn them into the next Urkel and Fonzie. What? You'd rather they focus on the other characters? Those lame, unappealing losers? Sure, Alan is a huge dork with little empathy or consideration for others, but his eccentric and childlike personality is the only one that might garner sympathy from the audience. Bradley Cooper's character is a smug jerk, and Ed Helms's is kind of an unlikeable wimp. Doug is utterly normal. Only Alan has gross-out comedy potential. Sadly, Alan, like Bradley Cooper's character, is too much of a jerk to become as likable as Urkel or Fonzie; the viewers and critics realized this too late. The producers also thought that Leslie Chow's weirdness would be a huge draw. I absolutely cannot imagine a "Hangover" movie without Leslie Chow. The creators did not disappoint. I expected Chow to be center stage in this movie, and the producers fulfilled my expectations completely. The problem with Chow is that he is too weird and too inscrutable to be likable. He has little redeeming personality traits to work as a character; he is just too much of an evil scumbag to become a likable villain. He is just too bizarre to be understandable. He is too perverted to be innocent and childlike. He is too intelligent to be an Alan doppleganger. He is not enough of anything to be an interesting character.
What do you expect for a sequel to a lame-brained gross-out comedy? This isn't Shakespeare, people! The director and producers gave the people exactly what they wanted, and, for some reason, the critics and people weren't warm to it. The film was pretty funny at parts, and Alan and Chow were fairly amusing throughout the proceedings. I can only hope the next movie is simply an Alan and Chow road trip adventure, directed by Tim Burton, and produced by the guys who made "Cabin Boy." Nobody would like it save for a few folks, but hey, it would at least be better than the formula followed by the other three "Hangover" movies.