The Hangover Part II
My Grade: C
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When I first started seeing the trailers for this movie a few months ago I was excited, considering I found the first movie to be one of the more original comedies -and the funniest- in years and still highly enjoy it to this day. Somehow a lot was lost in between the first movie and the sequel and I'd mostly chalk it up to the movie trying to "top itself."
The Hangover Part II takes place the chronological time of two years since the first movie with Stu now the one getting married to a Taiwanese woman he's met in the intervening time (not mention is made what became of Heather Graham's hooker with the heart of gold from the first movie) in her native land, also back is one his best friends, Phil a slick-talking pretty-boy and Doug the group's fourth wheel on a bicycle; the third wheel being Doug's brother-in-law Alan a man-child with a knack for causing trouble and having no clue on how to function in society.
Two nights before his weeding Stu and the rest of the gang heavy with Stu's future brother-in-law, a child prodigy, are having a beach-side toast when the movie flashes forward to the morning after with the guys in a seedy Bangkok hotel room with a severed finger, a shaved Alan, a tattooed Stu and the Chinese mobster from the first movie the brother-in-law is missing and must be found before they can return for Stu's wedding.
The movie's pattern more-or-less follows the same as the first one but is also paced a bit differently, it takes it a bit longer to get to the "morning after" and I didn't feel like the whole thing built up quite as well. The movie also tries too hard to be raunchier than the first.
I've no problem with raunchy humor but in the first movie it was mostly absent aside from that discovered photos on the camera at the end, in this movie there's a heck of a lot of male nudity, an encounter with a Ladyboy and a heck of a lot more raunchiness that, frankly, doesn't fit with the themes the first movie had, they also seemed to take all of the character traits of the guys and crank them up to Eleven, sort of like the evolution of sitcom characters between the first season of a TV series and the last season.
In the first movie Phil is a charismatic, big-talking, pretty boy whom we're eventually shown is a loving husband and father. In the second movie Phil is a complete jackass.
In the first movie Stu is a introverted, restrained, weenus prone to over-reacting. In this movie he over-over reacts and is prone to a lot more screaming and exaggerated expressions. He also freaks out at the sight of blood following a gunshot (later revealed to be a graze) this is a man who is a doctor.
In the first movie Alan is nothing more than a man-child with poor social skills, described as being "all there, just different." In this movie he's Sitcom Wacky Neighbor #204 with his various oddities with social norms cranked to high to the point one wonders why he isn't in a mental hospital.
Then there's Doug who is really just "there" this time around, sort-of, it would've been interesting (and probably refreshing, to put him in with the core group this go-around,)
In the first movie it's easy to forgive Phil for the way he acts all movie when we see him at the end with his wife and kid because we get that he's just acting brash with his friends, we feel for Stu because we can see he's in a bad relationship and just needs to open up, Alan we feel for because we see him as just an "odd guy" who never fits in with anyone. Here, everyone is an idiot and an asshole.
It'd also would have been nice if the movie didn't follow the first one note-for-note so precisely. The flashback to several days before, Alan being the cause of their memory-loss (and, really, after this time it'd be hard to take him seriously at all), the "realization" of where the missing person is, and the set-up for missing camera footage over the end credits.
Somehow there's just not much build-up and payoff in the movie, it takes too long to get to the next day, it's hard to care for the missing person considering the thin connections he has to the group -or the importance of his return, and the antics of their night just aren't as grand. It doesn't quite live-up to the taser scene from the first movie, meeting Mike Tyson, antics with the tiger, etc. It, for me, didn't work.
I grade this movie a "C" which, on my scale, is pretty low. It's about as low as I get before the movie starts getting terrible, I don't see myself getting this on DVD and, well, I didn't really enjoy it. Mostly indifferent to it. It seems, to me The Hangover was a gem in Tod Phillip's series of films, as "Due Date" was lame and I was never a huge fan of "Old School" (another see it once and you're good movie.)
If you're a fan of the first Hangover movie this one will not live-up to it, again, I can deal with the almost note-for-note rehash of the plot (that was expected) but the movie lost a touch of humor, "humanity" and a touch of plausibility. And, really, I don't think the setting worked for me either mostly because I, personally, don't see Bangkok as the "lose yourself there" sort-of place that Vegas is seen as.
The Mike Tyson cameo singing the expected song at the end, however, was great.
