Don’t you find
humour is such an over-rated quality in comedy? Thank God then for Todd Phillips who’s managed to free us from the tyranny
of laughter, nailing the coffin lid down on his Hangover trilogy with the anti-comedy The
Hangover Part 3, a film
able to boast fewer chuckles than Claude Lanzmann’s side-splitting Shoah.
After coming off
his meds (anti-psychotics surely?), accidentally decapitating a giraffe
(funniest moment of the film but in all the trailers) and indirectly causing
the death of his beloved father (Jeffrey Tambor), it’s clear something has to be done about drunken,
sociopathic manchild Alan (Zach Galifianakis) so it’s up to the other members of the Wolfpack –
Phil (Bradley Cooper),
Stu (Ed Helms) and
Doug (you know, the other one, Justin Bartha) – to stage an intervention and drive him to a rehab
facility in Arizona.
But once on the
road, they’re waylaid by crime lord Marshall (John Goodman) who kidnaps the hapless Doug (with the
cancellation of The New Normal how much worse can things get for Bartha?), threatening to kill him if
the gang can’t deliver teeth-grindingly annoying, camp Asian gangster Mr Chow (Ken
Jeong) who once rather
unsportingly stole $21 million in gold from Marshall.
Having escaped
the Thai prison he ended up in at the end of the last film, Chow’s on the run
and, as Alan is his only friend, Marshall figures if anyone can find him it’s
the Wolfpack. With just 3 days to
find Chow, steal back the gold and save Doug, their quest will take them from
Mexico back to Las Vegas where it all began…
Crass, crude,
lazy, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and unforgivably unfunny, the Wolfpack
are back! And, just like a real
hangover, The Hangover Part 3 kills your brain cells and leaves you feeling soiled. Just to be clear, we’re not talking the
good kind of hangover
where you wake up with the taste of strawberries on your tongue, in a
four-poster bed, next to a pneumatic Louisiana blonde with cornflower-blue eyes
and a neck like spilt milk. We’re
talking about the kind of hangover where you wake up in a hedge, soaked in
vomit and wee (not all of it your own), with blood on your hands, a mouth that
tastes like the floor of a taxi and the vague sense that something baaaaaaaaaaad
happened, something that
was all your fault. And you’d be
right. It is all your fault.
You…we all liked The Hangover.
The first film was fun; an obnoxious slice of Frat Pack, gross-out
douchebaggery that followed the misadventures of its drug-addled heroes as they
desperately tried to piece together how exactly they lost the groom on his stag
night, in the process striking comedy gold and becoming the most successful
R-rated comedy ever made. If it
ain’t broke why bother even trying to fix it so the second film was more of the
same only bigger, louder, cruder and less funny, its cultural high point being
the not entirely consensual bumming of one of the gang by a Thai ladyboy. But it still elicited a guilty giggle
or two. After all, a smoking
monkey and implied male rape are always funny. Aren’t they?
Which brings us to the trilogy’s epic conclusion and the rule of three: the
third part of any trilogy sucks! Just as the third Godfather couldn’t hold an altar candle to the
original and Return of the Jedi wasn’t a patch on Star Wars, The Hangover Part 3 effectively kills off the series by destroying your
fond memories of the first film.
Which does not bode well for the hugely anticipated The Human
Centipede 3.
While the first
film felt fresh and original, this third installment feels tired and cynical.
Junking the amnesia formula which served so well in favour of a B-grade action
movie plot, The Hangover Part 3 re-unites the old gang, with the notable exception of closet Phil
Collins fan Mike Tyson (and who’d have thunk we’d miss the subtlety and comic
timing of that lisping celebrity rapist?), but no-one’s doing this one for the
love. Todd Phillips obviously has
an infinity pool to pay for and compromising photos of Bradley Cooper who looks
less like an Oscar-winning actor here than a hostage.
With his lizardy
charm, Cooper could play douchebag, pussy-hound Phil in his sleep and proceeds
to do just that, occasionally waking up long enough to make an exasperated WTF?
face at whatever Galifianakis is doing while Helms’ uptight Stu is so
marginalised the sole reason he’s in the film is to act as a plot device,
enabling the Wolfpack to get their mitts on some (legal) drugs. Which leaves all the more room for
Galifianakis to shamble around, flogging his psychotic manchild schtick to death
while Jeong’s shrill, offensive Chow screeches, is vaguely sexually threatening
and, of course, gets his Wee Willie Winkie out again coz tiny penis jokes are
always funny. Aren’t they?
Heather Graham’s happy hooker turns up as a now pregnant
hausfrau for no real discernible reason other than to re-unite Galifianakis’
creepy Alan with the now 4-year-old baby from the first film in a scene that’s
obviously meant to be heartwarming but feels just a little, well, Operation
Yewtree, the film having gone out of its way in one scene to explicitly state
that Alan is a sex offender, giggling “Public masturbation on a bus…” while
reading aloud his own lengthy criminal record, making you want to scream at the
screen: “No! Don’t go in the tent
with him!” Which is probably the
reason for the inclusion of Bridesmaids’ Melissa McCarthy who continues to milk her 15 minutes,
appearing here as a conventional heterosexual love interest for Alan because,
you know, he can’t be
a kiddie fiddler if he’s with that chunky gal from Mike & Molly.
In fact, The Hangover Part 3 could be seen as a companion piece for Cooper’s Silver
Linings Playbook, both
films featuring damaged, mentally ill manchildren being saved by the love of
similarly damaged women. Screw
psychiatric treatment, all you need is love!
A moronic waste
of 100 minutes of your life, The Hangover Part 3 even manages to make spending $21 million dollars on
hookers and blow look boring. Pray
this was the last one.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Bradley Cooper,
Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, Mike Epps, John Goodman,
Heather Graham,
Justin Bartha,
Melissa McCarthy, Jeffrey Tambor
and Jamie Chung
Genre:
Comedy
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 40 minutes
(approx.)
Certificate:
15
UK Release Date:
Wednesday 22nd
May 2013
Rating:
0/5
Originally published at http://www.filmjuice.com/the-hangover-part-3-review/
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