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For Once, a Comedy that is also a Fine Film: "The Hangover"
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Truly brilliant comedy is a difficult art form to create. Combining unique and fresh characterization, bizarre and hilarious sight gags, witty and intelligent dialogue, an intriguing plot with an unknown and unpredictable outcome, all while designing an entire story that offers laughs and perhaps even insights completely heretofore unknown is no easy task. But with "The Hangover," Todd Phillips, along with a fine script, crafted cinematography and carefully nuanced performances, delivers just that.
Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore ("Four Christmases") and starring Bradley Cooper ("Wedding Crashers," "He's Just Not That Into You"), Ed Helms ("The Daily Show," "The Office") and Zach Galifianakis ("Out Cold," "Dog Bites Man"), the film centers around three immature, irresponsible and reprehensibly lovable men who lose track of groom-to-be Justin Bartha ("National Treasure"), their memories of the night's events and their morals during an insanely ridiculous bachelor party in Las Vegas. Hyped up for the past few months, the comedy delivers on every level, leaving the viewer not only satisfied, but also sore from so many gut-busting scenes.
Galifianakis is the breakout star of the film, already drawing comparisons to John Belushi. His "Alan" is not your typical, bumbling moronic character, but instead a rather different and odd take on the idiot of the group. He finds profanity offensive (preferring "goshdarnit!" and "shoot!"), wields some unexpected weaponry, carries a pager, makes strange statements and asks weird questions ("This isn't the real Caesar's Palace, is it? I mean he didn't live here, right?") and innocently creates the entire set of circumstances that drive the very plot of the movie. If Mr. Robert Downey, Jr. earned his Academy Award nomination for his role in "Tropic Thunder" last year, surely Mr. Galifianakis deserves serious recognition for his accomplishments here.
While Helms, Cooper, Bartha, along with bit players Heather Graham, Rob Riggle, Mike Epps and Ken Jeong, all deliver solid performances and cameos from Mike Tyson and Carrot Top provide surprises and laughs, the true heart of this film is in its execution. Rather than taking a bachelor party story at face value, "The Hangover" tells the story in non-linear fashion, making excellent use of the power of the unknown to keep the main characters, and more importantly, the viewer, in the dark regarding the outcome of all the debauchery. What makes the movie so fun is going along for the ride with the main characters, slowly discovering how the situations they discover in the morning came to be, then figuring out how to resolve the many crises at hand as a result. This device works alongside with (and perhaps only because of) balanced and sharp dialogue. As with other modern day comedic gems such as Phillips' "Old School," "Wedding Crashers" and "Step Brothers," "The Hangover" is infused with innumerable details, assuring repeated viewings to allow the viewer to catch everything.
By the end of the film, every loose end, both from the crazy night gone wrong and from the characters' personal circumstances, has been tied up in a satisfying and genuinely funny fashion. While this movie makes no pretense to offer any moral solution to the madness of Sin City or its effect on our gang of wild men, we still care about what happens to these characters and love to watch them figure things out and somehow become better off because of their conflicts. Only about ten more viewings will be required to judge "The Hangover" against "Old School," but as it stands after its opening weekend, this comedy is an instant classic worthy of its anticipation and praise. For a movie all about not remembering, "The Hangover" is nothing but memorable.
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