Riotous fun from the Wolfpack
FILM REVIEW: THE HANGOVER PART II. Barring The Godfather Part II, Superman II, Aliens, Return of the Jedi and a handful of other films, critics hate sequels, and often with good reason.
So you could be forgiven for thinking that The Hangover Part II, which has been slated by some pundits, is not good, but in fact it’s great.
If you’re one of the people who believed the first film to be the Citizen Kane of bachelor party movies – as one critic hailed it – then don’t be deterred.
Jewish director Todd Phillips and his team have made a beat-for-beat remake of the brilliant original and the result is a brilliant facsimile.
It’s happening again, says Bradley Cooper’s character Phil at the start of the film and from there we flash back to a few weeks before the wedding of Stu (Ed Helms), which is to be held at a beach resort in Thailand.
After some wrangling, the so-called “Wolfpack” of Phil, Stu, Allan (Zac Galafiniakis) and Doug (Justing Bartha) are bound for Thigh-land (as Allan mistakenly calls it).
One day before the wedding, Phil, Stu, Alan and Stu’s straight-laced,
surgeon-in-training brother-in-law Teddy get together on the beach to have one beer and wouldn’t you know it, they wake up in a seedy Bangkok hotel room with no idea how they got there.
All the signs point to a huge night; a tattoo on Stu’s face, a severed finger in an ice bucket, and a missing Teddy, but no one can remember what happened.
So begins a sort of low-brow Homeric odyssey to piece together the epic night, taking in a kidnapped Buddhist monk, a smattering of Thai ladyboys, arms dealers, drug dealers, crime lords and a smoking, denim-clad monkey.
Ken Jeong returns as the grotesque, international criminal, Mr Chow, and there are cameos from Nick Cassavetes, Paul Giamatti and Mike Tyson.
This is laugh-out-loud stuff, possibly better than the original. Galafiniakis is uproarious as the socially stunted buffoon Allan, and justifies his increased screen time in the sequel.
He has the perfect blend of vulnerability, blithe self-assurance and comedic sensibility that make him the most sought-after comedian in Hollywood at the moment and an utter joy to watch in nearly everything he does.
Often these sorts of tent-pole studio sequels end up as pale imitations and exercises in one-upmanship, but you always go the sense that Phillips and his co-writers would take more pride in their product and they don?t disappoint.
The set-ups are taken to another level, but they are effortless, not forced, as though the schadenfreude of punishing their characters filled the writers with glee.
At its heart, this is base, gross joke stuff, but there can only be one true measure of a successful comedy and that’s whether or not it’s funny. On this level alone, The Hangover Part II is elevated.
The Hangover Part II is currently screening.
REVIEW: Adam Kamien
RATING: *** 1/2
PHOTO: Zac Galifianakis (left), Ed Helms (right) and Bradley Cooper star in The Hangover Part II.
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