The Hangover Part II
You remember when America's Got Talent had those quick-change artists on and everyone loved them the first time and then they came back and kept doing the same damn routine over and over only changing minor details and finally Piers Morgan had enough and asked if they were deaf or dumb (thus voicing-harshly-what I imagine everyone was thinking)? No? Me either. Caught it on YouTube some time later. But it's true. The first video I saw the quick-change artists in, I was floored. How the hell did they do that? Then I saw it again and still couldn't figure it out but wasn't as impressed (then Katy Perry pulled the trick out during a recent tour stop and I was floored again... how could she pull it off?). ANYWAY, The Hangover Part II? It was kind of like that but without my being impressed the second go-around. I mean, it was exactly like the part where it was the same routine with changes only to minor details (the locale, the missing person). All the core aspects? The EXACT same. Exact. Dudes go out for some pre-wedding shenanigans (this time Ed Helms' Stu is the lucky soon-to-be-former-bachelor). Someone drugs their stuff. They black out after an unseen night of rowdy shenanigans. They wake up to one member of the group missing (Mason Lee's Teddy... the young prodigy brother of Stu's fiancee...). Then scrambling, shrieking shenanigans ensue as they struggle to put all the pieces of the previous night together, find missing person (though with Mason Lee's acting ability, I would have preferred he stay lost... at first I was sure he was related to a producer or something. There had to be some reason they'd let this wooden puppet play a crucial role... best I can figure is that Warner Brothers is looking to snag Ang Lee's next picture and to seal the deal, they cast his kid as a main character). Oh yeah, they also decided to include original Hangover scene-stealers Ken Jeong (the flamboyant gangster Mr. Chow) and Mike Tyson (former boxing champ Mike Tyson) in on the "fun". Because there's no such thing as too much of a just right amount thing. By about the fifth minute of the day-after shenanigans, you come to realize that the outcome of the movie is never in doubt. Again borrowing from the predecessor, all will work out in the end, the wedding will happen, and missing puppet...errr... dude, will be found. Getting from point A to point B (in the straightest of lines) will include Alan being a complete weirdo (only in heavier doses), a ton of raunchy jokes, male nudity, and annoying talk of the wolf pack. Eventually, our heroes get to point B and the end credit rolls... all the while you're thinking to yourself, you know what, I've seen this before. Because you have...
I know the lack of originality is the main and consistent knock on The Hangover Part II, but damn it, it's true. I suppose an original movie kind of deserves an unoriginal review. So I suppose I have nothing to apologize for there. But, you know, it wasn't just that the one-trick pony came out on to center stage and did his one trick again... it's also that they tried to improve that one essential trick by force feeding the audience one element of the trick that was particularly cool. I mean, let's just say that The Hangover was like a pony that did a series of back-flips and then did the splits on the final landing. And damn it, that's the only trick that pony knows. So, the next time the circus comes around, having nothing else to do the ringmaster trots out the back-flipping pony. Same-old, same-old, right? No, because the ringmaster knows that the audience loves them some splits, so he just piles the splits on. After every landing, there's a quick pony-split. Awesome right? ... Actually in this case probably, but still, it's the same essential trick, they just added more splits. And for the sake of my incredibly dumb analogy, we'll just say that after the fifth splits, it kind of gets old, but man, that pony is just a back-flipping, splitting fool. I guess what would have been a better analogy would be if as the back-flipping pony landed it ripped ass loudly. Then the ringmaster decided the pony should fart every flip... even manufacturing some piped in fart-noises in case the pony was up to the gassy task. That, actually is a lot more apt. Still lost? Me too. What I'm trying to say is that The Hangover II quickly devolves into the Alan being weird/shitty/dumb show...paired with the Mr. Chow being present/more flamboyant/more naked show. In other words, they took two of the elements of the first movie which really took the audience... and then heaped it on the sequel to a point of blatant excess... even manufacturing scenarios for the two characters to be their essential selves. Ugh. It's like when The Simpsons discovered Homer, not Bart, was the most popular character and the reason was his wise-beyond-his-dumb ways. So they made him the focal point of the series, made him dumber and whinier and proceeded to watch the series sink like a stone. Of course the writers who tanked the show seem to think otherwise, but that is neither here nor there... the fact is, The Hangover Part II follows in the same mold. And it is indeed much to the film's detriment. What worked in the right amount in one scenario, does not work in excess in another.
I suppose I should probably point out that I wasn't among the folks who thought the original Hangover was among cinema's greatest gifts to comedy. I did think it was decently funny, and refreshingly...well... fresh in it's approach. Where a lot of movies focused to a fault on the debauchery we were left to watch the process of essentially good guys coming to grips with a bad, bad night. Fun stuff. Here? It's the exact same. Fool me once...shame on... shame on you...Fool m twice...shame on... shame.. on.. uhhh... I won't get fooled again. (Or something like that). IT'S THE EXACT SAME STORY!!! And that's why everyone thinks Hollywood has run out of fresh ideas... because they have. For their part, at least the folks in the movie repeatedly referenced that it was all happening again. (Presumably while envisioning sacks of cold hard cash falling through their roofs again). But as that wore on, it actually became more grating.
Look, this routine may play well with the drunken frat-boy crowd. (Probably not though... if they stop to think about it). But for me? I needed something different. Even just moderately different. But nope, they went samesies on their predecessor. No way in hell I'm going samesies on the grade...
Grade: D
No comments:
Post a Comment