Back in 2003 Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth made a documentary film project entitled The Five Obstructions. The crux of the project was that von Trier would challenge Leth to remake his short film The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different challenge, or obstruction to overcome. The first remake had to be made in Cuba, using no set, and with no shot longer than 12 frames. Leth did this. Then von Trier ordered him to remake it in the worst place in the world, but not actually show where they were. When Leth filmed it in a seedy neighborhood in Bombay he only partially obscured the setting behind a translucent screen, so von Trier punished him by giving him increasingly weirder challenges for the rest of the trip down the rabbit hole of remaking the same movie over and over again. Why do I bring this up? Because when you’re watching The Hangover Part II, it often feels like von Trier might be doling out another set of obstructions, this time to Todd Phillips, with the challenge being to remake The Hangover over and over again. For your first challenge you must set it in Thailand, Zach Galifianakis must shave his head, Ed Helms must get a tattoo on his face, but Bradley Cooper must remain handsome for marketing purposes. I also bring it up because talking about anything is more interesting than talking about the absolute bore that was The Hangover Part II, one of the more disappointing sequels I’ve seen in my life.
The Hangover worked really well because it hit like a sucker punch out of nowhere. It moved fast, it had fresh faces, it was full of quips and one-liners, and it presented a series of over the top shocks that kept the audience guessing what could possibly happen next. Consequently, while I was in hysterics the first time that I watched the movie, it hasn’t proven to be one of those comedies that gets funnier and funnier the more times you watch it. The humor doesn’t spring logically from the characters and who they are; it springs from randomness and absurdity. Alan isn’t so much a real character that can be viewed as a grounded mirror of someone you know, he’s just a voice for every off the wall thing that goes through Zach Galifianakis’ head. Stu doesn’t react to things the way he does because he’s a conservative dentist, he just does whatever insane thing the plot needs him to. So when you’ve already seen the movie, and you already know what’s coming, the jokes hit with less of a punch every time. I think that the first movie has gotten a bit of a bad rap because of this. I’ve sensed some revisionist history going on about how much people liked it. During the summer of its release I recall nothing but people gushing to me about what a hilarious movie The Hangover is; these days it’s not rare to hear someone almost smugly tell me how awful it was. The over saturation of praise for that first film became so pervasive, the quoting of truly funny lines by people who I don’t consider funny at all so constant, that looking back on even the bits that played really well over multiple viewings from that film becomes a tarnished experience. Kind of like how the original Austin Powers movie has become completely unwatchable over the years due to unfunny people’s bad impressions of the character driving the material into the ground. So, despite the fact that the movie is only two year’s old, the bloom has come off of the original Hangover for a lot of people. In order for a sequel to work it would have had to do wildly different things than the first one, and with a completely new set of jokes. Since The Hangover Part II doesn’t do either of those things, watching it becomes a pretty tedious experience.
A lot of big budget sequels fall into the same trap of trying to make everything bigger, everything crazier, so that it feels like the first film has been outdone. If there was a big explosion in the first movie, then there will be constant big explosions in the sequel. If there is a great super villain in the first movie, then the sequel will have three of them. Hollywood sequels get so obsessed with being bigger than the original that actually making a film that stands on it’s own as an enjoyable viewing experience often gets overlooked. To say that The Hangover Part II doesn’t fall into this trap should be a compliment, but it’s not. This sequel doesn’t try to make things bigger, crazier, and nastier than the first; but it doesn’t try to do anything different whatsoever. Seemingly, the only thing the makers of this movie attempted to do was recreate the experience of watching the original as closely as they could. Watching The Hangover Part II doesn’t even feel like the experience of watching a sequel. It does things so close to the first that it felt like I was just having my fourth re-watch of that film. Given The Hangover’s law of diminishing returns on re-watches; this was a very bad thing.
So how was this film such a retread and why was covering the same material as the first one such a grievous affront to my sensibilities? I’m glad that you asked. This sequel copies the original film in two primary ways, by aping its exact plot structure and by relying on callbacks to jokes from the first film in order to get laughs. I saw the retread of the plot coming. Just from watching the advertising it was clear that the focus of this film would be on the characters having yet another blackout drunk experience the day before a wedding. But I still had hopes that this film would be as chock full of new jokes and clever asides as the first one. As long as I got a new batch of random idiocy from Zach I probably would have walked out of this one satisfied enough. Unfortunately, the dearth of new material is so great that I was shocked at how barren and depressing the experience of sitting through this one truly was. The quotable lines from the first Hangover number easily in the dozens. I struggle to think of a single thing said in Part II that isn’t just a reference to something that happened in the first film. In the first one Alan makes references to going to Jonas brothers concerts that are funny because of how random and strange it is for a grown man to be excited about the Jonas brothers. In this film, instead of thinking of something new and silly to talk about, we get several references to how crazy it is that Alan talks about the Jonas brothers. The effect here is less, “haha” and more, “oh, that old Alan!” In the first film we get a random interlude where Ed Helms’ character sings an impromptu song about everything they’ve been going through. It was funny because it came out of nowhere, it served as a cathartic quiet moment in a storm full of chaos, and it was actually a fun little song. I this film we get a random interlude where Ed Helms’ character sings an impromptu song about everything they’ve been going through. The effect is, “oh, we’ve gotten to the part of the movie where Ed sings his song.” I was so bored by going through the motions that I can’t even tell you if the song itself was funny or not, I was too busy groaning. And in the first movie he sings his song on a piano that has been sitting in their hotel suite the entire time. In this one he sings it while playing a guitar on a boat. Where he got the guitar or why they’re on a boat is never explained. This isn’t a movie about real people going through a real experience together. It’s the next Hangover, a Hollywood blockbuster comedy product. Yuck. If you’re somebody who gets warm tingly feelings just by being reminded of something you liked, then maybe this will be an acceptable film for you. For me, “that old Alan” holds no value. If I want to revisit The Hangover, I’ll just watch it again. I’ve bought a ticket to The Hangover Part II because I want to experience something new. And as filmmakers, Todd Phillips and the other creative forces behind this film should have felt an obligation to serve something fresh.
The entire first act of this film consists of people reminiscing about the craziness of the first film. The second and third acts consist of nothing but near exact recreations of the second and third acts of the original. If the lack of new jokes was a surprising disappointment, the traversing of well-worn ground that was following the plot became a tedious chore. The core group of guys not only find themselves in the same predicament, they follow the exact same path in getting themselves out. Like clockwork, every reveal that happens in this movie mirrors a reveal that came in the first. You get the feeling of a detective solving the same case twice. Where’s the tension or the intrigue the second time? We already have all of the knowledge we need at our fingertips. By the time we get to a rooftop lunch with a character played by Paul Giamatti I was bored stiff. The guys in the movie didn’t know what was going on, “who is this guy?” they wonder as they blindly walk into a meeting with him. I wanted to shout at them, “what do you mean, ‘who’s this guy?’ He’s a gangster! This is the part of the movie where you get entangled in organized crime! Don’t you remember?”
But what’s different about this movie? Surely something must be different, right? Not much. There’s a sequence involving a lot of transsexual strippers’ penises that was pretty shocking. That was one thing that the new setting lent the film, a tranny joke. It was okay as far as tranny jokes went, I laughed at it. It felt nice to get a joke that wasn’t a reference to something from the first film, even if the joke was just making us look at penises. Also, Ken Jeong’s character Mr. Chow gets an expanded part in this film. Instead of being the gangster that the gang runs afoul of, he tags along with them for a good chunk of the movie and becomes a catalyst for a lot of their mishaps. This wasn’t a good thing in my eyes. Ken Jeong was the least funny thing about the first Hangover, and this sequel affording him the opportunity to spend more time screeching in a cartoony, racist Asian accent wasn’t something that I welcomed. I’ve liked some things that Jeong has done before, mostly I’ve enjoyed him when he’s playing things quiet and dry or is acting as the pot about to boil over, but when he gets into hyperactive screaming mode I find him to be insufferably unamusing. So yeah, I guess the only thing I didn’t hate about this movie was seeing a transsexual’s penis.
I haven’t yet gotten through all of my notes about the myriad ways that this film was able to repeat itself, but I’m going to go ahead and wrap things up anyway. I feel like I’m talking in circles. My one note coming out of this viewing experience could have just been, The Hangover Part II is tired and boring and completely devoid of ideas. Watching it was like a slap in the face. During every second of it’s runtime I was picturing the studio suits ordering that this sequel be slapped together as soon as possible and then wringing their hands in greed imagining the mountains of cash that they were going to slit puppies’ throats over. I imagined the cast and the director being asked back, and them not questioning anything about the project other than how big their paychecks would be and which crazy party city they were going to be flown to. This film makes the base assumption that it doesn’t have to try because it’s audience will be too stupid to notice that it didn’t. It presents the thesis that the only thing you have to do to please a mainstream audience is to give them something unchallenging and familiar. Yes, I know that there are going to be some members of the audience that that’s true of. And yes, I realize it’s going to be enough to get this movie a gigantic opening weekend take at the box office. But how unhealthy and destructive is it to keep this path going where all a movie needs to be successful is a huge opening weekend audience that sees something because of it’s pre-existing brand recognition? We’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t matter what a film does in week two or week three (the point in a movie’s shelf life where people might be seeing it because of good word of mouth), because the studios have already cast it aside to focus on their next big tent pole release coming out the following weekend. We’ve gotten to the point where every film is treated like a big summer event; multiple films, every weekend. Churn them out, over and over. Slap a brand name on them, get them in theaters, and then move on to the next one. It’s a destructive cycle that’s sucking all of the creativity out of a creative profession and making it impossible for people who are making new kinds of films full of new kinds of ideas to get their projects seen. Every time we go see a big sequel that doesn’t exist for any storytelling reason, we are feeding the monster. Every time we go see a remake of something that exists only because it is a recognizable brand, we are cannibalizing our own culture. How long before there’s nothing left? Ten years from now are we going to be seeing the now yearly Spider-Man reboot, the 13th Hangover sequel, and the new re-imagining of the re-imagined Green Hornet? That sounds like a pretty lousy proposition to me. And aside from all of that, The Hangover Part II is a disappointment just because everyone involved in it is capable of doing much better. If someone actually had a story for a new Hangover movie and was excited about what they had written, revisiting these characters could have been a real joy. As is, watching this film is about as joyless as following a working class schlub to their boring job and watching them toil all day; go through the motions, cash the check. No thanks, call me when you have a story to tell.
