Illustration from the miniature book Adventures of the Flighty Old Woman by Robert E. Massman, 1966
I've seen a lot of dumb "guy" movies, and I've even reviewed a couple on this site (e.g. Observe and Report and I Love You, Man) but I am still willing to assert that I'm not a fan of the genre. I am a fan of some of the actors that work best in this medium, though, and I saw The Hangover because it had two of my favorites, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis. I've liked Ed Helms since he was a correspondent on The Daily Show, and his weird, desperate insecurity works just as well on The Office. I've mostly seen Zach Galifianakis do stand-up, as in the documentary The Comedians of Comedy, and I've always found his delivery, which alternates between blank recitation and unhinged agitation, to be the funny kind of unusual.
In The Hangover, Helms and Galifianakis are joined by Bradley Cooper as three friends who have a really bad night in Las Vegas. They've gone to Vegas for a bachelor party celebration for their friend Doug (Justin Bartha) but find in the morning that he's gone missing. They also discover evidence that, during their celebratory blackout, they've been to a hospital, acquired a live tiger and an infant, stolen a police car, and done at least a dozen other c-c-c-crazy things. The severely episodic plot has the three friends trying to piece the night together to find Doug, moving from one awkward situation or violent encounter to the next and getting increasingly desperate as the time of the wedding draws closer.
I'm guessing that this was a pretty dire draft script when director Todd Phillips got his hands on it. Luckily, his knack for funny but unapologetically fratboy-ish humor and his ability to get the right cast together saved this project. The Hangover works because the three principles work. Cooper brings just the right amount of self-loathing to Phil, the unhappily married, douchey schoolteacher. Helms plays Stu, a henpecked dentist, with the right amount of tense insecurity and bottled-up rage. And Galifianakis is the key to it all. As the odd man out, the future brother-in-law invited along with three longtime friends, he's the unknown factor. A bearded man-child with a startling combination of bravado and naivete, Galifianakis delivers at least 90% of the movie's laughs. He brings a lot of nuance to the character, too - halfway through the movie, he says, "Sorry guys. I fudged up," and I suddenly realized that his character had managed to seem creepier than his foul-mouthed companions but had never uttered a single dirty word.
Because it is made up of a string of vignettes that don't really build in intensity, The Hangover runs out of juice a good half hour before its ending, an ending that tries to milk a little too much sentimentality out of the crass humor that has preceded it. But I'll admit that I laughed pretty hard for the movie's first hour, and I'll cheer for any movie that will make Zach Galifianakis a known commodity. For a glimpse into the unadulterated weirdness of Galifianakis' own projects, watch some episodes of his interview show Between Two Ferns here.
And check it out - I managed to find a song that alludes to the plot of The Hangover pretty well, too. How about that?
"Red Cross Vegas Night" by Robert Pollard
0 comments:
Post a Comment