We’ve all been there. You wake up from a night out, feel ‘the fear,’ try to remove yourself from a bear hug from a man you don’t recognise and definitely ended up in your bed as a result of some serious beer goggles, and slowly start piecing your night back together. Director Todd Phillips takes that concept and runs with it with The Hangover Part II the sequel to 2009’s box office hit, The Hangover.
If you haven’t seen the first Hangover film, we’ll fill you in. The lads Phil, Stu and Alan, are in Las Vegas for their buddy Doug’s wedding. They wake up in a hotel room after some drunken misadventures, missing memories and the groom. They must retrace their steps to find him and get him to the Church on time.
The second film sees the boys heading to Thailand for Stu’s wedding to a Thai girl (after making a pact never to talk about the events of the first film). Worried that history will repeat itself, a psychologically scarred Stu refuses to have a bachelor party, until his arm is twisted into having one drink on the beach with his friends, and his wife-to-be’s 16-year-old brother Teddy. Some time later, the boys wake up in a hotel room in Bangkok to find they’ve accumulated a monkey, Stu has a huge Mike Tysone-esque face tattoo, and Teddy’s gone missing. With only 24 hours before the wedding, they’ve got to figure out what the hell happened.
Who’s in it?Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong
Handbag hearts…
It’s all to easy to complain that The Hangover II is ‘more of the same’ so we’ve decided not to. Todd Phillips is delivering what the audience wants - the same laugh-out-loud comedy that made the first film such a big box office hit in 2009, and you can’t really berate him for that. The film is pretty much a carbon copy of the original,which is fine by us, if the formula ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Full of shocking moments, bad language (Bradley Cooper’s character Phil drops the ‘C-bomb’ in the middle of an International House of Pancakes), nudity and violence it moves from one laugh to the next seamlessly and had us willing it to finish for fear our sides might split. Ed Helms plays Stu fantastically, and it’s great fun watching his face as he attempts to comprehend the things he’s capable of when the ‘devil is inside him.’
What’s bad?
How The Hangover Part II got certified for release is unfathomable. Homophobic, a little racist at times, and with women appearing to be either a commodity or unimportant (their wives barely speak, and are rated on the solidness of their racks), we only forgive its sins because it’s so funny, and we can’t find many other faults.
Should you go and see it?
Definitely, The Hangover Part II, like its predecessor needs to be seen in the cinema for big-screen impact and to make you feel a little more comfortable than you would be howling with laughter by yourself.
