The Hangover Part II Review

Imagine working in an office and you’re working on the mundane task of photocopying. You’ve spent all day refining your craft on this boring repetitive work but everything is pristine and you’re proud of how it’s all gone, you may even have some pride in your work.

Sadly you happened to do this the day before the office Christmas party where some witless Neanderthal has decided to take your pristine work and use it as ammunition for the ultimate prank, scanning photocopies of his lower regions.

So you come in after Christmas, waiting for your acknowledgment of all the hard work you’ve done and everyone points the finger, wanting an explanation of why this atrocious, seedy, strangely dark and non-funny joke as it were was created and why you’ve gone out of your way to ruin a perfectly good thing prior.

Metaphor over; The Hangover Part II.

Two years ago, the highest grossing R Rated comedy in film history was unleashed and boy howdy was it a fun ride. Four friends go to Las Vegas for an unforgettable stag-do which results in everyone forgetting a chaotic night with the groom missing.

What sounded simple on paper was a total riot with all the hall markings of a modern classic. It had the iconic characters, the fantastic jokes, possibly one of the most surreal cameos in film history (topped only by Bill Murray’s appearance in Zombieland) and on the whole, it was a fun, unpredictable film.

Naturally this being the worst recession for a century and it being a comedy, a sequel has been released for what I initially hoped would be an expansion on the characters in a brand new situation which could test new comedic situat…hahaha

Just kidding!

Simply put The Hangover Part II will forever be seen as the benchmark of copying and pasting the exact same movie. You could go so far to say that Part II is a remake since the premise is practically identical from the original.

For those who never saw the original (in which case; why?), The Hangover Part II has Stu the dentist (played by Daily Show alumni Ed Helms) is getting married to someone who isn’t Heather Graham but rather Lauren. Lauren and Stu’s wedding is set to take place in Thailand and the wolf pack in reunited (with Lauren’s younger brother Teddy played by Mason Lee added to the mix)

After deciding not to chance another Vegas, the gang decide to have one beer to celebrate Stu’s impending third marriage and subsequently wake up in a Bangkok hotel room with no memory of the night before, Teddy missing and a number of strange occurrences taking place in the room. The gang have to piece together the night before, find Teddy and get to the wedding on time.

So yes, tweak the names and add a new locale, the film is exactly the same as the original minus minor alterations. So naturally, your guessing that even if the film a carbon copy of the original, surely it would have all the humour from the original despite, you know, already seeing and hearing these gags once before.

And this is where the film falls flat. The jokes from two years ago are generally the same this time around, although the film makers have upped the ante so to speak by making everything much darker and depraved from before to add a sense of escalation.

The problem is the film pushes the envelope so far, it leaves the room and ends up on a different planet altogether. The original was a fun picture with likable characters finding themselves in multiple surreal but ultimately resolvable scenarios whilst the sequel finds the same characters in scenarios that simply aren’t funny and for nealy 90% of the time, are simply there to inflict punishment on those of us stupid enough to invest in the characters.

Two examples of this (and spoilers ahoy for the next paragraph); The gang finds themselves in a stripper bar trying to find where they went next (much like the wedding chapel from last time, it even had the same actor playing the owner), here we discover that Stu again proposed to a stripper (again like last time) which he said no and instead had sex with the stripper who turns out to be a ladyboy. There’s another example of this where the gang is attacked by gangsters (this time Russian as opposed to Chinese) and Phil is shot in the street (which is quickly glanced over throughout the film as simply a graze).

Whilst the original did have its raunchiness and placed our characters in often difficult situations, there was never any overt cruelty and our characters were only punished temporarily. Here they are constantly pushed to their limits and are patience is tested time and time again. The payoff at the end of the film for all the suffering simply isn’t worth it and the ending also provides another surreal celebrity cameo, although it’s simply there again to join the dots to the far superior original.

All in all, The Hangover Part II is a dark, immensely cruel and most offensive of all, unfunny carbon copy of the distinctive and superior original. It’s insulting to think the filmmakers think they could get away with retelling the exact same film to the audience but hey, we’re all the more foolish for hoping for something special (and in my case, going to see it anyway).

For all three of you who never saw the original, you may get a kick out of it, it does have the occasional good line and full credit to all the leads for doing there best. For those who have already seen the original, await the inevitable Youtube mashup which will sync the scenes to show just how lazy a film can be.

You’ll get far more enjoyment out of that than watching this and consuming the amount
of mind bleach needed to forget this debacle.

3/10

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