The no-holds-barred bachelor’s party ranks as one of life’s great paradoxes. OK, maybe not one of the great paradoxes, but certainly in the top 100 or so. As anyone who has ever engaged in such depravity can attest (or so I’m told), this particular rite of passage turns on the conceit that its most memorable times are those that you barely remember.
The Hangover guzzles that down and chases it with a few dozen shots of Jägermeister. Hilariously and cheerfully raunchy, it excels where so many other man-boy misadventures devolve into insipidness. Don’t confuse my praise for any acknowledgment of high-mindedness. The flick certainly isn’t above the obligatory gross-out, whether it be a geriatric backside or a sudden bout of vomiting, but director Todd Phillips and the screenwriting team of Jon_Lucas and Scott Moore are smart enough to base the debasing in characterization.
Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married in two days, and so best friends Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) take him to Las Vegas for a final blowout. Phil, a married schoolteacher, is the requisite cool dude who isn’t quite as cool as he thinks. Stu, a mild-mannered dentist, is henpecked by a shrewish girlfriend (Rachael Harris) under the false belief that the guys are going to Napa Valley for a wine-tasting tour. Tagging along with the chums is Alan (Zach Galifinakis), Doug’s soon-to-be brother-in-law, who appears to have some troubling traits. “I’m not supposed to be within 200 feet of a school … or Chuck E. Cheese,” he mentions in passing.
They check into Caesar’s Palace and toast a night they’ll never forget. Cut to the following morning. Phil, Stu and Alan wake up with supreme hangovers in a trashed hotel suite. That’s the least of it. A tiger is in the bathroom. A baby is in the closet. Stu is missing a front tooth, Doug is nowhere to be found and none of them can remember the night before. In this shaggy-hair-of-the-dog mystery, the trio must piece together the previous night in hopes of finding the groom.
Part of the film’s success is its inspired casting. Helms spirals into sheer panic without sacrificing believability, and his conspicuously missing tooth adds a discomfiting hint of Deliverance-style delirium. There are memorable supporting bits by Heather Graham and Rob Riggle, but it is Galifinakis who comes close to stealing nearly every scene. He gives Alan a childlike innocence as endearing as it is sociopathic.
The Hangover loses some steam in the final act, when Mike Tyson turns up for a cameo and the movie’s black comedy gives way for safer, broader ground. But then the movie acquits itself with a raucous end-credits montage.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 