Can you blame Warner Brothers for wanting to milk every cent out of the most successful comedy in the last 5 years? You can if you bought the first-ever barebones DVD release of The Hangover. Or if you held out and bought the edition they released a few months later that included a fair slate of extras. Or maybe you waited until they released the deluxe pack that included the t-shirt? You would think, after about 3 or 4 different releases of The Hangover on DVD and Blu-ray that Warner Brothers would figure that everyone who wanted to buy a copy at this point had. But no. In an effort to catch any last stragglers they’ve put together the Extreme Edition. Now, you would think that, assuming this is their final end all be all release of the film, that they’d go the extra mile and pack it with anything they were wise enough to hold back and throw in a really cool collectible like a stuffed baby with sunglasses, the t-shirt, and more. Instead, this deceptively titled Extreme Edition falls so far short of its namesake that it’s actually disgusting. Buyer beware, The Hangover: Extreme Edition is a prime example of shameless studio profiteering on worthless repackaging. If you really want something more than just the film on your shelf, buy the edition that comes with a t-shirt – this is a criminal waste of your money.
If you’re anything like the average 20 or 30-something, your friends have probably insisted on watching The Hangover a few dozen times, and thus you know the story of Doug (Justin Bartha), Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) as well as you might the story of the three little pigs or Snow White. Four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor’s party, get hammered, and wake up the next morning to find the groom-to-be missing, one of the friends newly married, an Asian guy (Ken Jeong) in their trunk, Mike Tyson’s tiger in their hotel suite’s bathroom, and nary a clue as to how it all went down. They begin retracing their steps in a desperate race against the clock so they can find Doug and get him home in time for his wedding. It’s quotable, it’s rewatchable, and it’s genuinely funny (the first few times). You can’t argue with the comedic talent of the cast, as Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis prove to be a worthy team who benefit from an equally capable roster of character actors including Heather Graham, Mike Epps, Rob Riggle, and Jeffrey Tambor.
For Todd Phillips, this was a long overdue return to form of the comedy that put him on everyone’s radar, Old School in 2003. Since then he had two comic flops with Starsky & Hutch (which attempted to cash in on the exhausted comic relationship of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson) and School for Scoundrels (which never had anything going for it whatsoever). The Hangover proves that Phillips is at his best when directing funny guys playing male roles with the maturity of fraternity pledges as they yell, scream, and curse through a parade of physical comedy. I’m not dumping on the film here, this is just what Todd Phillips does, and he does it extraordinarily well. So yeah, the film has strong comedic merit, but no comedy ever could warrant so many blatant cash-in releases as The Hangover has received from Warner Brothers. The Extreme Edition has nothing to set it apart from its predecessors save for a little booklet featuring some of the crazy pictures of the forgotten night’s events that may elicit a chuckle from you if you’re drunk, but utterly fails at comedy. The only reason the photos were funny originally was because they trailed the film during the credits with our endorphins already flowing and the events of the film fresh in our mind. Looking at the booklet of photos without the film’s entirety preceding it as context, it’s little more than a scrapbook for a few guys you don’t know from one of the best parties no one can remember. This is the “substantial” addition, with a music sampler CD of the more memorable songs from the soundtrack spliced with audio clips from the film (but I’ll be damned if that has ever been a worthwhile extra) constituting the other new bonus. Substantial is in quotes here, because it’s a useless picture book that you’ll never look at again, assuming you even do the first time.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The disc includes both the theatrical and unrated versions (7 extra minutes of hilarity(!)(?)) of the film, a picture-in-picture commentary of the film with Phillips and the stars (but only on the theatrical version of the film). Keep in mind though, this commentary, and the rest of these extras were all available on previous Blu-ray releases – making it absolutely clear, once again, that Warner Brothers is trying to screw you over with a picture book and music sampler for a few extra dollars or a double-dip (but if you double-dip for this version, you deserve to be reamed). The other extras are a map of the night’s events, more pictures from the missing camera (essentially made redundant by the now-included picture book), a featurette on Ken Jeong, the potty-mouthed wedding singer’s performance of “Fame”, Ed Helms singing his humorous in-film song, and a collage of action moments from the film.
"The Hangover - Extreme Edition" is on sale October 12, 2010 and is rated R. Comedy. Directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Jon Lucas, Scott Moore. Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Heather Graham, Jeffrey Tambor, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Zack Galifianakis.
