Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Paul Giamatti, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey Tambor, Mason Lee, Jamie Chung, Sasha Barrese, Gillian Vigman, Aroon Seeboonruang, Nirut Sirichanya, Yasmin Lee, Nick Cassavetes, Sondra Currie Writers: Todd Phillips, Craig Mazin, Scot Armstrong Director: Todd Phillips Running Time: 102 minutes Distributor: Warner Bros.
Technical: 3
Moral Assessment: 1.5
CINEMA rating: R18 (For viewers aged 18 and above)
Phil (Bradley Cooper), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Stu (Ed Helmes) wake up in a seedy hotel room in Thailand with no memory of the previous night. What’s worse, they are missing their fourth companion, 16-year-old Teddy (Mason Lee), but find Teddy’s finger sitting in a bowl of ice. A monkey drops from the ceiling and another person wakes up, but everyone remains clueless about how they all came to be where they are. What they all know is they must all make it to Stu’s wedding pretty Thai girl Lauren (Jamie chung)—which is the reason they have flown to Thailand in the first place—but how can they appear at the wedding without Teddy, Stu’s future brother in law? So they embark on a mad search for the missing teenager, encountering gangsters and other gun-toting characters along the way.
Let’s talk about the plot. If you’ve seen Hangover 1 (2009) you’ll have a fair idea of what to expect from Hangover 2. Same cake, fluffier, fattier icing. We resonate with a web reviewer who writes, “Director Todd Phillips seems to have taken the Hangover screenplay and moved it laterally from Las Vegas to Bangkok while retaining the same sequence of scenes: Call to bewildered bride to be, flashback to wedding plans, ill-advised bachelor party, four friends waking up with terminal hangovers in unfamiliar hotel room, ominous signs of debauchery, desperate quest to discover what happened, etc.” If you were not offended by Hangover 1, you’ll enjoy Hangover 2 as it presents more of the same ingredients rejected by those who found the movie offensive. But that’s not an absolute—middle of the roaders who saw some redeeming factors in Hangover 1 and therefore laughed along with its raucous humor might, just might, think that Hangover 2 has gone way over the top. But even if you have not seen Hangover 1, you can either thumbs-up or thumbs-down this one as there’s a story all right, and a screenplay that’s easy to follow.
If you had a stake in producing Hangover 1, what could possibly motivate you to invest in Hangover 2? Clue: the 2009 version grossed $485 million, the highest grosser of the year in R-rated comedy. Its production budget was $30 million. Those guys must have thought, “If audiences lapped up Hangover 1, why not give them more of the same?” So they plunked down $35 million on the sequel—do you hear the clinking of the cash registers in the background? You’re not wrong. Money is never a mean motivator. We wonder, though, how this movie will register among Thai viewers—it shows the side of Bangkok that their tourist brochures would probably never even mention. Hangover 2 is definitely not for impressionable or immature viewers, whatever their age. In fact, actor Galifianakis (who plays the Alan character), when swamped by children-fans for his Hangover role, reportedly yelled at their parents for letting them see it. We hope it was a sincere gesture, but then, again, in this gimmick-moved world, that could have been another ploy to get more xxx-hungry adults to go see it.
