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Visual:		7.0
Audio:		7.0
Acting:		9.0
Writing:		8.0
Score:		8.0

Director(s):	Todd Phillips
Writer(s):	Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
Starring:	Bradley Cooper • Ed Helms • Zack Galifianakis • Heather Graham • Justin Bartha • Jeffrey Tambor
Genre:	Comedy
Website:	http://hangovermovie.warnerbros.com/
Release Date:	June 05, 2009
Rated:

Shedding the broader PG-13 comedy of his past two films (Starsky & Hutch and School for Scoundrels) director Todd Phillips returns to the kind of raunchy guys-get-together humor that he does best. The Hangover isn’t a grounded comedy (it still involves a loose animal, a Mike Tyson cameo, a brush with the mob and some crazy stunts) but it is something any guy who’s had a crazy Vegas experience should easily relate to.

The premise is simple, as the funniest comedies often are, but it’s chock full of memorable events. A weekend in Vegas takes a very interesting turn when three best friends wake up in their Caesar’s Palace penthouse the morning after a wild bachelor’s party to find that their fourth friend is missing. The problem is, said friend is getting married the next day in Los Angeles, and all three guys are in alcohol amnesia (“Dude, Where’s My Groom?”). So begins a mad 24-hour search across Las Vegas while they try to remember just what the hell happened the night before. Naturally, the situation doesn’t turn out to be a simple manhunt.

While it isn’t the pinnacle of mystery plots, there’s a fun Holmesian method to the way our three characters solve the missing person quandary by assessing several puzzling clues left at the “crime scene.” A patient tag around one’s wrist leads the trio back to a hospital, and so on and so on. More than “What happened?” and “Where’s Doug?”, the film presents several intriguing mini-riddles like a full-grown tiger in the hotel bathroom, a missing tooth, or a baby in the closet. Oh yeah, their borrowed Aston Martin has also somehow turned into a police car. What do these things mean? Each answer is another piece of the puzzle, adding a little more clarity to the overall picture of their hazy drunken night. After answering them one by one, we eventually see the complete chronology of their night and can then finally have an idea of “what happened” and “where’s Doug.”

The brilliance of The Hangover’s cast perhaps is that it’s a comedy act where the straight man is missing for most of the film. With Doug (Justin Bartha) out of the way, we’re left with three unfiltered misfits. As to be expected, insane comedian Zack Galifianakis gets the biggest laughs of the three just by being a complete nutball, but the three also work really well with each other, picking up one after the other like a relay race to make sure there’s a constant stream of laughs.

All three of their characters suit the actors’ known comedic style. The Office’s Ed Helms plays the mild-mannered Stu, who gets the sympathy laughs as he navigates through one crazy situation after another while having to cover them up over the phone to his p-whipping girlfriend. Bradley Cooper’s role is the already married Phil, the dumb bad boy of the bunch, whose reckless attitude suggests that he’s constantly trying to recapture his carefree single days. Then there's Galifianakis, playing the mentally unstable and oddly adolescent Alan, the kind of person who thinks a blood oath is a good congratulatory wedding toast.

Each of them is experiencing a different stage of malehood. They’re the types of personalities one would shed before a hard commitment, the types that come out in places like Vegas. They have to go find Doug, which in a way is like finding a mature self. After all, isn’t that what bachelor parties are supposed to represent? A hearty goodbye to the wild?

The standout performance of the film, however, goes to Dr. Ken Jeong, who has previously only played bit parts in Judd Apatow productions like Knocked Up, Step Brothers and Pineapple Express. He steals the show completely as an excessively effeminate but brutally violent Asian mob boss out to harm the trio for yet another mysterious reason.

Ultimately, it’s just another wild night-out-on-the-town movie, with the usual cliches often used in this sort of comedies (regrettable drunken Vegas marriage, mob boss giving deadlines, celebs spoofing themselves), but as I said before, the story is secondary to comedy bits they run into, all unbelievably funny in their execution. I couldn’t breathe in many of the scenes, and must’ve missed a few jokes due to the riotous laughter of the audience. The Hangover is without a doubt going to be one of, if not the most laugh-out-loud movie of the summer—probably of the year.