By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
For a movie about guys who can't handle their liquor, The Hangover Part II can be pretty sobering.
By Melinda Sue Gordon, Warner Bros. Pictures
One night in Bangkok: Zack Galifianakis, left, Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha and Ed Helms stumble into more outrageous high jinks in the sequel to 2009's comedy smash.
By Melinda Sue Gordon, Warner Bros. Pictures
One night in Bangkok: Zack Galifianakis, left, Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha and Ed Helms stumble into more outrageous high jinks in the sequel to 2009's comedy smash.
It's not that the jokes in this ill-fated sequel are rehashed from the first film. Refried humor would have felt like a cold beer in the summer sun here.
Instead, the sequel dispenses a (five o'clock) shadow of the original, a comedy that uses the same punchlines, sometimes literally, as the first film but mistakes further-fetched skits for funnier ones.
Whereas The Hangover delighted in politically incorrect comedy that included babies getting bonked in the head and men misplacing teeth, here we get cocaine overdoses and severed fingers.
Was director Todd Phillips still groggy when he co-wrote this tale of another bachelor party gone awry, this time in Bangkok? He has gone from Road Trip, Old School and Hangover to, most recently, Due Date and this misfire. His humor, like his films, has taken an inexplicable turn for the mean-spirited.
Witness Phil (Bradley Cooper), the hunky party animal whose escapades in Vegas in the original did nothing to satiate his love of a bender. He was a charming souse in the first, a guy whose grin-and-swill-it attitude helped make the 2009 original the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever.
That charm must have evaporated in the heat of a dilapidated Thailand hotel, where Phil and buddies Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) awake in another stupor, far from the site of Stu's impending wedding.
Consider the first film and the comedic discovery as our heroes trundled through their Vegas hotel room to find a baby, a chicken and Mike Tyson's hungry tiger.
* * out of four
Stars: Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms
Director: Todd Phillips
Distributor: TriStar Pictures
Rating: R for pervasive language, strong sexual content including graphic nudity, drug use and brief violent images.
Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
Opens Wednesday nationwide
The trio unearth new party casualties this time, including a lifeless body and the severed finger of a teenager. Their response is to dump the body in the hotel ice machine. Then bolt it. Get it?
If not, you're in for a long movie. Hangover II marks one of the most derivative sequels of the year: The opening and closing scenes are taken almost shot-for-shot from the original. Just substitute Asians for Americans, gross-outs for guffaws.
Some members of the cast still shine. Galifianakis can deliver a deadpan joke as effectively (and just as absurdly) as Will Ferrell. Ken Jeong, who reprises his role as fast-talking Mr. Chow, has some laugh-out-loud moments, though his rapper-wannabe schtick is getting old. Tyson makes a clever return, and there's a chain-smoking, dope-dealing monkey who is going to get some laughs.
But it still feels watered down. For all the talent Hangover II reassembles, our boys just can't muster the hair of the dog that bit them the first time around.
Veronica Kay Trista Rehn Jessica White Charlize Theron Amber Heard
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