Rating: ***
Apparently lightening can strike twice. That’s the way it goes in The Hangover Part II, right down to the film’s opening minutes where Phil (Bradley Cooper) warns Tracy (Sasha Barrese) that a night debauchery went off the tracks and that the wedding party is one man short. This time the wedding is for Stu (Ed Helms), the game board is the Thai city of Bangkok, and the ubiquitous baby is replaced by a smoking monkey in a rhinestoned Rolling Stone denim vest.
Yes, The Hangover sequel unfolds pretty much how you expect it to, although fortunately the writers didn’t make Doug (Justin Bartha) the lost buddy for a second time. Bartha still gets to be part of the show, but not really part of the antics, which is more than can be said for Heather Graham, Stu’s lady love from the first film. Graham seems to have been jettisoned for Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch), if only to make the wedding trip to Thailand go over more plausibly.
But mostly, what works for the first Hangover is held over for part two. Phil, Stu and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are re-united as the Wolfpack wakes up groggy and in pain in a Bangkok hotel after a night-long binge. Missing is Teddy (Mason Lee, son of Ang) the prodigal brother of Stu’s bride Lauren. Not missing is Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), for all intents and purposes the villain of part one, and current pen pal of Alan, who it turns out is Alan’s plus one to the wedding. Apparently, meeting girls is hard when you’re a “stay-at-home son.”
The pack sets off to find Teddy, with only a few fragmented memories and a limited number of clues, like Stu’s unfortunate facial tattoo, Teddy’s severed finger, and a date, time and location for a meet written on Alan’s belly in permanent marker. Paul Giamatti pops up briefly as an associate of Mr. Chow’s; he may or may not be holding Teddy as a card till he can get money from Chow. Naturally, it keeps Phil, Stu and Alan’s Oz-like trip through Bangkok going for an extra 45 minutes, as the trio must overcome warnings that they may never get Teddy back. “Bangkok has him now,” people keep telling them, as if “Bangkok” is some kind of mystical force designed to keep outsiders wild, never allowing them to return to their buttoned up, Western lifestyles.
The chemistry between Cooper, Helms and Galifianakis is intact and used well. I enjoyed how director Todd Phillips resisted the urge to beef up the Alan part and expanding it ludicrously, taking advantage of Galifianakis’ breakout status from part one. In fact, Galifianakis’ re-intro was oddly muted. We find him alone, at home, with nothing but the memories (such as they are) and plastered pictures on the wall of the Wolfpack’s wild night in Vegas to sustain him through Phil and Stu’s silence. Galifianakis doesn’t overplay it either. He’s restrained and always stops himself from going to far over the top. Plus we get to go a little deeper into Alan’s dark side.
As for the film’s itself, this reviewer is still unsure what exactly to make of it. On the one hand, as Jimbo once observed, the whole thing smacks of effort. While they don’t go too over the top, Phillips is very calculating in taking some scenes to outrageous new directions; a scene in a Thai strip club is especially revealing, if you get my drift. I don’t remember beginning to end laughs like in the first Hangover, but that might be my memory playing tricks. Basically, if you liked the first movie, there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy the second.
