Starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms
Directed by Todd Philips

★★★

With such a vast amount of caper themed comedies released over the past 30 years or so, it’s a nice and rare thing to get one that can stand on its own. With such a ‘comedy by numbers’ format the scope for originality has at this stage, run very thin.
The sub genre really hit its peak during the 1980’s; most notably with the string of successful college caper movies by National Lampoons and John Hughes. The latter truly setting the bar for all to reach with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986.

After a brief lull, the popularity of such films was rekindled in the late 1990’s; the likes of the American Pie series and Old School enjoyed decent box office success. But while these films did have their moments, you couldn’t help but get the sense that you were watching an enjoyable homage to the golden days rather than something fresh and new to add to the archives. The Hangover went back to the blueprint, drew a few new angles and got it right.

The story focuses on four 30 somethings as they prepare for a Bachelor weekend in Las Vegas. There’s Doug, the well mannered nice guy and bachelor in question, Phil, the wise cracking school teacher who can’t wait to put his mundane life temporarily on hold, Stu, the painfully organised dentist who is kept on a tight leash by his controlling girlfriend and Alan, Doug’s odd and very unpredictable soon-to-be brother-in-law.

Suitably psyched up, the four head to the vice city where they check in to a luxury hotel suite, dress sharply, and raise a toast to Doug and to the wild night ahead.
The next morning Phil, Stu and Alan awaken, suffering heavily from the titular effect and no one has a clear memory of what happened the previous night. There are a number of unexplainable items in their hotel room and, most alarmingly, Doug is missing.

The Hangover is, for the most part, a very funny film and impressively maintains a consistent comedic level over its duration. Despite the relative simplicity of the plot, it doesn’t waste time and the characters are not overwritten; what we know or think about them is secondary to the irregular situation they find themselves in. Nor is any one of them a vehicle for a sidetracking sub plot.

The film’s only real negative is that that the usually seamless, well timed dialogue has a tendency to become a little overstretched and repetitive when things slow down in the ‘trying to figure things out’ scenes; non essential lines such as “We are completely f**ked!” and so on could have been expressed a little less often.

Overall, The Hangover is a well conceived, solid comedy that excellently marries the “thank god that’s not me” absurd situations of the movie world, with the all too real absurd situations arising from best laid plans in the real one. And I challenge you not to, at least once, proclaim “Oh god that has been me!”