The Hangover Part II has no illusions about the ridiculous nature of its premise of the same men from the previous film somehow repeating the worst mistake of their lives. Making plenty of “this again?” jokes to get the audience back in the swing, the trio of Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms run haphazardly about Bangkok trying to retrace their steps and find yet another lost friend. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to just retread the plot, but The Hangover Part II feels the need to rehash the jokes as well, and unfortunately they’re not as funny the second time around. It still manages to squeeze out some laughs, but considering the standard set in the original, The Hangover Part II never really raises the stakes or pushes the envelope to the next level.
After marrying and divorcing Heather Graham in Vegas, Stu (Helms) is getting married in Thailand (where his wife’s family lives), and so he and Phil (Cooper), Alan (Galifianakis), and Doug (Justin Bartha) fly out. Two nights before the wedding they decide to have a bonfire on the beach of the resort and, even after taking special care to make sure Alan can’t spike their drinks, they wind up with hangovers and memory loss in a sleazy hotel in Bangkok. Stu has a copy of Mike Tyson’s facial tattoo and instead of a tiger in the room with them there’s a monkey wearing a Rolling Stones vest, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) from the first film, and the detached finger of Teddy (Mason Lee), Stu’s soon-to-be-wife’s younger brother whom her father adores more than anything. The rest of Teddy, however, is missing and so they set out into the Bangkok chaos to discover the havoc they wrought the night before.
Unlike in the previous film, Galifianakis can’t pull his own weight due in large part to his brand of humor relying entirely on his lines being outlandish or based on mispronunciations of common words. It just doesn’t pass muster the second time through. Galifianakis rose in the world of comedy by playing off concepts of absurdity, and there was enough of that in the first Hangover for it to play to his strengths. This time though, the events and the sense of humor are lacking in originality and thus the absurd is just commonplace, making Galifianakis’s presence here pointless.
Conversely, Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper are just as funny with their respective styles of high-strung exasperation and chuckling nonchalance. Really, that’s what the film works off of; at the heart of the film’s comic premise, this is a comedy using the basic funny man and straight man. The funny man simply rolls with the punches of each new revelation as the other half of the pair goes into a nervous meltdown. Does it get old? Sure. Predictable? You bet. The only reason The Hangover Part II works though is because Helms and Cooper play surprisingly well off one another.
A major disappointment this time around is the lack of surprise guests popping up. The Hangover has Mike Tyson punching Ed Helms in the face, Rob Riggle sets Galifianakis up for a tazing, Mike Epps as Fake Doug, Heather Graham marries Ed Helms, and Ken Jeong jumps out of a car trunk. This time around though, we just get Paul Giamatti as a business acquaintance and Nick Cassavetes (“Who?” you ask, appropriately) as a tattoo artist. The Hangover Part II sorely lacks in surprises and just relies on slapstick when it’s not reminding us how funny the first one was.
Beyond its own shortcomings, The Hangover II suffers by following hot on the heels of Bridesmaids. Even with the Kristen Wiig comedy running about 15 minutes to long, it provided solid laughs and set the bar for the summer’s comedies higher than Todd Phillips evidently expected. Assuming you want to a solid two hours of laughs, you’re better off seeing Bridesmaids again because The Hangover Part II spends far too much time reliving the past and not enough time attempting something new.
"The Hangover Part II" opens May 27, 2011 and is rated R. Comedy. Directed by Todd Phillips. Written by Craig Mazin & Scott Armstrong & Todd Phillips. Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Nick Cassavetes, Paul Giamatti, Zach Galifianakis, Mason Lee.
