The headache has truly set in for the laboured and self-conscious The Hangover Part II. It's more a remake than a sequel.We all enjoyed ourselves during that first movie. But now … well, the hangover has begun. And begun so powerfully, so oppressively, that you might almost suspect the success of the original was created specifically to engender this comedown as a piece of conceptual art.
Each reminder of the original, each repetition, each desperate, hair-of-the-dog attempt to recapture the party feeling: it's exactly like living through a hungover flashback-memory of what had once seemed so great.
In Hollywood, said William Goldman, nobody knows anything. Who knew The Hangover, from fratpack comedy director Todd Phillips, was going to be such a huge hit? Nobody – perhaps not even the people involved. The story of a Vegas bachelor party that goes horribly wrong looked pretty ropey on paper, and yet it was great. Some thought it was sort of a monkey-typing-Hamlet fluke, but it's actually the sort of fluke that only happens to smart people who keep trying.
The Hangover was funny and the structure was daring. Act one: pre-party – then we jump straight to act three, post-party, and the movie is about the bleary, amnesiac guys trying to piece together act two: what the hell happened? This is not definitively revealed until the sequence of digital photos over the final credits. Brilliant! It showed the spirit of movies like The Usual Suspects or Reservoir Dogs.Bradley Cooper had the chops – he had been a forgettable, almost invisible presence in many movies before this, but he blossomed in H1. There were some cracking comedy turns. Zach Galifianakis was great as the weirdo brother-in-law Alan and Ken Jeong was a real find as the abusive comedy gangster Mr Chow. Everything came together.
Sadly, H2 can't even quite claim the credit of being the first Hangover sequel: the road-movie comedy Due Date, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr, attempted to cash in on its success, none too successfully. At least it tried a vaguely different plot. Hangover Part II seeks only to repeat almost every element of the first movie. It's not a sequel, closer to a shot-for-shot remake. This time, the guys go to Thailand for a wedding, in the same shark-jumping way that the Sex and the City girls whooshed off to Abu Dhabi for their profoundly depressing sequel. It feels a bit like a feature-length Christmas special of a well-loved British sitcom.
The original's quirks have now become a formula. The grim daytime shots of Vegas at the beginning are now grim daytime shots of Bangkok; the tiger is now a monkey; there's a different sequence of photos over the final credits. Pretty much everything has its equivalent. Infuriatingly, all the fun has been drained from the movie, simply in repeating almost every trick. The same: but lame, and lame because the same.
Now it's the nerdy dentist Stu (Ed Helms) getting hitched, to a beautiful Thai woman Lauren (Jamie Chung), whose father hates Stu. Slightly insultingly for Justin Barth, his character Doug was the groom-to-be who disappeared in the first movie but he doesn't get a turn at participating in the hi-jinks now.
Stu stays in the story and Barth's nice-but-dull character is sidelined. Stu's goofiness is evidently considered more important to the action, and Phillips perhaps considers that the gang already has a handsome guy in the form of Cooper's Phil.
In Hollywood, said William Goldman, nobody knows anything. Who knew The Hangover, from fratpack comedy director Todd Phillips, was going to be such a huge hit? Nobody – perhaps not even the people involved. The story of a Vegas bachelor party that goes horribly wrong looked pretty ropey on paper, and yet it was great. Some thought it was sort of a monkey-typing-Hamlet fluke, but it's actually the sort of fluke that only happens to smart people who keep trying.
The Hangover was funny and the structure was daring. Act one: pre-party – then we jump straight to act three, post-party, and the movie is about the bleary, amnesiac guys trying to piece together act two: what the hell happened? This is not definitively revealed until the sequence of digital photos over the final credits. Brilliant! It showed the spirit of movies like The Usual Suspects or Reservoir Dogs.Bradley Cooper had the chops – he had been a forgettable, almost invisible presence in many movies before this, but he blossomed in H1. There were some cracking comedy turns. Zach Galifianakis was great as the weirdo brother-in-law Alan and Ken Jeong was a real find as the abusive comedy gangster Mr Chow. Everything came together.
Sadly, H2 can't even quite claim the credit of being the first Hangover sequel: the road-movie comedy Due Date, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr, attempted to cash in on its success, none too successfully. At least it tried a vaguely different plot. Hangover Part II seeks only to repeat almost every element of the first movie. It's not a sequel, closer to a shot-for-shot remake. This time, the guys go to Thailand for a wedding, in the same shark-jumping way that the Sex and the City girls whooshed off to Abu Dhabi for their profoundly depressing sequel. It feels a bit like a feature-length Christmas special of a well-loved British sitcom.
The original's quirks have now become a formula. The grim daytime shots of Vegas at the beginning are now grim daytime shots of Bangkok; the tiger is now a monkey; there's a different sequence of photos over the final credits. Pretty much everything has its equivalent. Infuriatingly, all the fun has been drained from the movie, simply in repeating almost every trick. The same: but lame, and lame because the same.
Now it's the nerdy dentist Stu (Ed Helms) getting hitched, to a beautiful Thai woman Lauren (Jamie Chung), whose father hates Stu. Slightly insultingly for Justin Barth, his character Doug was the groom-to-be who disappeared in the first movie but he doesn't get a turn at participating in the hi-jinks now.
Stu stays in the story and Barth's nice-but-dull character is sidelined. Stu's goofiness is evidently considered more important to the action, and Phillips perhaps considers that the gang already has a handsome guy in the form of Cooper's Phil.
Now it's the bride's sweet younger brother Teddy who tags along on the stag night, disappears, and has to be found at all costs, because he is the apple of his father's eye: he is played by 21-year-old Mason Lee, son of the director Ang Lee. Jeong and Galifianakis seem very subdued and under-par compared to their earlier appearances.
Then there's the question of the big non-PC cameo to match Mike Tyson's bizarre performance in the original. Rumours have been rife. We had heard about Mel Gibson (that idea was abandoned), Liam Neeson (reportedly cut) and even Bill Clinton.
Actually, Paul Giamatti makes an appearance as a bad-tempered tough guy, but this isn't the big cameo – that comes in the form of the celebrity booked to sing at Stu's wedding. You may be hoping for Liza Minnelli. Well, no spoilers, but suffice it to say, this too is a bit of a letdown.
Making The Hangover Part II must have been like going up to a great guitarist who'd just pulled off a brilliant improvised solo, and telling him he had to repeat the performance the next night, note-for-note. The result is self-conscious to say the least.
I have to admit that there are one or two nice lines. When the guys gather outside Alan's bedroom, preparing to invite him along, Jeffrey Tambor, playing Alan's father, tells them to "Go in slowly; let him acclimatise." When Stu defiantly claims: "There's a demon in me!", Alan hits him with a zinging comeback in the bad-taste spirit of the first film. Flashes of fun like this are rare. It's a sobering experience.
Then there's the question of the big non-PC cameo to match Mike Tyson's bizarre performance in the original. Rumours have been rife. We had heard about Mel Gibson (that idea was abandoned), Liam Neeson (reportedly cut) and even Bill Clinton.
Actually, Paul Giamatti makes an appearance as a bad-tempered tough guy, but this isn't the big cameo – that comes in the form of the celebrity booked to sing at Stu's wedding. You may be hoping for Liza Minnelli. Well, no spoilers, but suffice it to say, this too is a bit of a letdown.
Making The Hangover Part II must have been like going up to a great guitarist who'd just pulled off a brilliant improvised solo, and telling him he had to repeat the performance the next night, note-for-note. The result is self-conscious to say the least.
I have to admit that there are one or two nice lines. When the guys gather outside Alan's bedroom, preparing to invite him along, Jeffrey Tambor, playing Alan's father, tells them to "Go in slowly; let him acclimatise." When Stu defiantly claims: "There's a demon in me!", Alan hits him with a zinging comeback in the bad-taste spirit of the first film. Flashes of fun like this are rare. It's a sobering experience.