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New Movie Review: The Hangover By Kim Sabshin  |
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In some cases, there are movies that you know right off the bat that you’re going to like. Either you’ve heard good things from friends who know your tastes well, or something from the trailer made you crack up the first time that you saw it. In the case of The Hangover, both of these were true and I walked into the theater expecting to chuckle at least a few times. I wasn’t the least bit disappointed.
Doug (Justin Bartha) is about to get married, and his best friends Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) plan his bachelor party along with his future brother-in-law, Alan (Zach Galifianakis). The foursome goes to Vegas for what they hope will be a night that they will never forget. However, they wake up the next morning with their hotel room a disaster area and no recollections of the previous night. To make matters worse, Doug is missing and the wedding is in only two days.
As the groomsmen retrace their steps, they get themselves into situations that are almost too ridiculous to put into words. Their first glimpses at the hotel room are priceless - a live chicken is walking around, Stu is missing a tooth, there’s a blowup sex doll in the tub, and that’s only the beginning. Each time they follow a new lead they learn something else that they would have been better off not knowing. To make a long story short, I don’t remember the last time I laughed this hard at a movie.
The cast has great chemistry and everyone fits their roles perfectly. Bartha doesn’t get enough screen time to tell much (given the plot), but his costars shine. Cooper’s character is a cocky teacher who is less mature than most of his students and Helms plays a geeky, henpecked dentist, but Galifianakis steals the show as a socially inept but likeable oddity who gets almost all of the memorable one-liners.
Heather Graham makes a brief appearance as Jade, a stripper with a heart of gold who helps the guys put together what went on the night before. While she could easily be reduced to a stereotype, she becomes surprisingly likeable and there is even some blossoming romance by the movie’s end. Former heavyweight Mike Tyson himself also has an amusing cameo.
All in all, The Hangover is well worth the price of admission. It’s gotten a lot of hype and positive reviews, and deservedly so. It isn’t exactly a great work of art, nor will it be anything that you want your young kids to see (which should be fairly obvious by now). Still, if you go see The Hangover in the theater, you will definitely get what you paid for: a good time, a lot of laughs and a very funny new movie.
Rating: 4.5/5
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