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Laramie Movie Scope:
The Hangover

An epic lost weekend comedy

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by Robert Roten, Film Critic
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June 6, 2009 -- This vulgar comedy about a bachelor party gone wild in Las Vegas could have been named “Dude, where's the groom?” The jokes and sight gags are hit and miss, but the plot is compelling and it has a lot of twists and turns that keep you guessing right up to the end. The movie also does a good job establishing some interesting characters.

The story starts out near the end with four disheveled men standing near a beat-up car in the middle of a Nevada desert. The wedding is only hours away and they have no idea where the groom is. Through flashbacks, we follow the men to Las Vegas and the bachelor party for Doug Billings (Justin Bartha of the “National Treasure” movies). They wake up the next morning and can't remember what happened the night before. Doug is nowhere to be found, there is a chicken in their hotel room, a baby in the closet and a large, menacing tiger in the bathroom. In between the scene in the desert and the scene in the hotel room lies a 24-hour period in which most of the action in the movie takes place. As the dazed men, Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis of “What Happens in Vegas”), Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper of “He's Just Not That Into You”) and Stu Price (Ed Helms of “The Office” TV series) try to figure out what happened the night before. As they pursue clues left behind from their wild party the night before, they find that they are wanted by the police and by a dangerous little man who was locked in the trunk of their car. Mike Tyson also has a grudge against them and they discover that Stu got married to a stripper, Jade (Heather Graham of “Bowfinger”) the night before.

The crazy storyline is the result of one alcohol-fueled irresponsible decision followed by another inadvisable decision followed by another and another and so on. What makes the story worth following is that it is unpredictable and there are two interesting characters, the weird social klutz stoner Alan, who is responsible for a lot of strange events, and the uptight dentist, Stu, who is totally henpecked by his girlfriend from Hell, Melissa (Rachael Harris of “The Soloist”). Stu vacillates between total meltdown and being a dangerous loose cannon. Phil Wenneck is the self-proclaimed leader the group, but he isn't very good at being a leader and his followers aren't that good at following, either. A lot of movies of this ilk have a character like Stu. He is too repressed. He needs to loosen up a little and live. The answer to his problems? Alcohol and drugs, of course. That is a good reason one should not draw any life lessons from this movie, or others like it.

The story is cleverly constructed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (“Four Christmases”) even though a lot of the jokes misfire. Instead of being a basic stoner comedy, it also has elements of a mystery story as the three men look for clues to what happened to them the previous night. This method of unraveling the story makes it more interesting. The acting is also quite good, particularly by Zach Galifianakis, who is a real revelation in this film. He and Ed Helms create characters that are worth following through this strange story. The other characters, Phil Wenneck and Doug Billings are kind of bland and uninteresting. Mike Tyson plays himself in the film and he is suitably bizarre. There are some other Las Vegas celebrities, like Wayne Newton and Carrot Top in a kind of slide show while the credits roll. The slide show is supposed to be taken from a digital camera and shows scenes from that lost night in Las Vegas. At least one of those pictures comes pretty close to pornography. There is also a full-frontal male nude scene in the film and a few scenes with explicit sex talk, but most of the rest of the film is sexually tame. This film rates a B.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in digital formats, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

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Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.
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Robert Roten can be reached via e-mail at my last name at lariat dot org. [Mailer button: image of letter and envelope]

(If you e-mail me with a question about this or any other movie or review, please mention the name of the movie you are asking the question about, otherwise I may have no way of knowing which film you are referring to)