I saw The Hangover 2 last night. As the trailers would suggest, it’s the exact same movie as the first one, even more so than you might expect. It’s got the exact same framing structure with exact same scenes (Opening with a beat to hell Bradley Cooper making a phone call breaking the bad news “it happened again,” backtrack to the lead up to a wedding, the trip, the toast, the blackout the wake up, everything). It so faithfully duplicates the first movie, it’s almost meta.
Having said that, it still has some pretty funny stuff in it. The crudeness is amped up. Mr Chow (Ken Jeong) is great in his scenes, there are some surprisingly crude visual gags The guys trying to figure out what that “worm” thing is sticking up out of a heap of crap on the floor, only to discover that it’s Mr. Chow’s penis, the scene in the strip club with the chicks with dicks walking around, not sexual, but the photo of Cooper and Jeong recreating the infamous photo of a VC prisoner being shot in the head. This movie is a hard R. They push the envelope and then some.
I can’t say I didn’t laugh at some things. Probably the best bit was Ed Helms finding out he’d been buggered by a transexual prostitute. It wasn’t great or anything, but I think it was a little better than the first movie, just because they kept what worked and chucked what didn’t.
I thought it was at good as, if not slightly better than the first. Granted the formula was exactly the same, but they they stuck a big fat lampshade on that, and there was plenty of variation within the boundaries of the formula. Having a rowdy audience probably helped too.
I wish monkeys could skype too. They should have had a cameo by Amy Farrah Fowler.
And of course when I saw Siam Sam’s, I pointed and said “I know him! Sort of…”
It was basically exactly what I thought it would be: a retread of the first one (which I like a lot). It was not bad but it was very very familiar.
A few things bugged me, story-wise:
[Spoiler]
The time line of the whole deal with Paul Giamatti didn’t make sense to me. They found a note written on Alan’s belly to meet someone at 6 while they are still having their night of fun and the day after he pretends to be a mob boss that has their friend hostage and is using that to get to Chow but how could that be when the message was written before Teddy was even missing? It seems like the cause and effect is a little wonky there.
I thought for sure it would turn out the finger wasn’t Teddy’s and when it was revealed it was, I couldn’t believe how blase everyone was about it. The kid was a cellist and studying to be a surgeon. Both careers have been ruined and no one cares because he had a fun night?[/spoiler]
Teddy wasn’t part of the original plan. Giamatti had a deal going with Chow and told him over the phone when and where to meet. Chow just wrote the info on the nearest thing handy (Alan’s belly). The next day Chow missed the meeting, but the strip club owner told Giamatti about Teddy, so he pretended to have kidnapped him in order to get to Chow.
This is how I felt about the film. This was okay, instead of being funnier, the scenes in this movie were just raunchier. The snapshots at the end were funny; they should have been moved to the middle of the movie. I was wondering why Teddy’s father didn’t focus in on Teddy’s missing finger, as well as Teddy’s non-reaction to the loss. Maybe Teddy felt his father was pushing him into paths that Teddy didn’t really want and the missing finger would force the issue. The movie has made so much money that I’m afraid there’s going to be The Hangover 3, where the location is the only element that’s changed. I did like Nick Cassavetes role as the tattoo artist, however.
I laughed all the way through it. I think if you liked the first Hangover, you are almost guaranteed to like this one. Because, it’s the same damn movie. And, I don’t say that as a bad thing. It’s fun to see how they were able to come up with new jokes while still mirroring the first one. I thought the performances of the main 3 guys were hilarious. There was some good jokes, and all around it was a fun time at the movies.
One problem I had with the movie:
The entire joke about Ed Helm’s character having sex with the transsexual stripper bothered me. I’m an advocate of everyone and anyone being fair game for a joke. But, come on, jokes about transgendered people are tiresome and worn out. Ha ha that woman’s a dude! Let’s all laugh and get grossed out and think less of a group of people. While most of the movie is fun raunchy humor, I don’t find much of it mean spirited. I found that scene to be mean, hackneyed, and unnecessary. I don’t know if it is just the joke that bothered me, or my audience’s reaction to it. Literally, with the reveal, people were retching, and every mention of it afterward led to cries of loud disgust. I guess it’s a combination of the reaction, and the idea that a scene was built with the possibility of that kind of reaction towards an already heavily marginalized group of people bothers me. So. I might have laughed. But, I still didn’t really care for it, and I was hoping for some sort of twist to justify the cruelty, turn the scene on it’s head and defy the usual cliche. Oh well.
Anyway. I’ll see the next one. At this point it would be more interesting if they did away with the whole wedding theme altogether and risk pissing everyone off with a totally different take on things. I doubt they would go with that, but it would be fun. I think all of the performers could pull a lot off.
oh. My favorite scene of the movie was probably Allan’s image of how the world is. It fit perfectly with the character, and it was hilarious.
I haven’t seen it, but I loved the first movie so much that I don’t want to ruin that by actually watching the remake. From the posts on this thread, it sounds like I made the right decision.
I only ever hear that term “hard R” on this board, and I’m still not quite sure what it means. Is it just a movie that pushes the envelope and earns its R, as opposed to a film that got an R because someone said fuck once, or is that an actual new rating?
About a decade ago, I invented the term The Mike Myers effect, which is when a sequel to a great original comedy is really more of a remake, where they try to re-do the exact same jokes and premise, while just changing the setting, resulting in an absolutely TERRIBLE sequel which even ruins the good name of the original…and then a couple years later, they remake the sequel, resulting in a completely UNWATCHABLE film.
The Hangover 2 sounds like it is suffering from The Mike Myers effect. How long until Hangover 3: Hungover in Space comes out?
BTW - Terminator 2 had a PG-13 rating when first reviewed. Cameron went back and made the scene where T-1000 kills John’s foster parents more bloodier to get an R. What kind of solution do you want to this hard R thing. Are you suggesting that the minimum age for R should be dropped, or that Hard R’s should only be accessible to people over 30?