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'Hangover'? Go back to sleep

Tasteless comedy misses all chances to be funny.

Published online on Friday, Jun. 05, 2009

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What was made in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas with "The Hangover." The film is a cheap knockoff of what should have been a much funnier movie.

Four friends head to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. They wake up the next morning to the aftermath of what had to be a cross between an orgy and a coup. The worst part is they're missing the groom. Since the guys took a date-rape drug instead of Ecstasy (that's supposed to be funny?) no one can recall what happened.

Director Todd Phillips, with the forgettable big screen version of "Starsky & Hutch" to his discredit, guides three of the buddies through a quest of discovery that includes a wedding, the theft of Mike Tyson's tiger and a showdown with a flamboyant Asian man who spends a lot of time naked. Each joke is either painfully predictable or the kind of humor that's really funny at 3 a.m. but loses its shine in the light of day.

The script makes the very similar "Dude, Where's My Car?" look like a Rhodes scholar wrote it.

Phillips confuses the line between being outlandishly funny and simply offensive. Jokes with babies being hit in the head with car doors and made to look like they're masturbating cross the line. This is not smart writing.

Tyson is painful to watch. He stumbles through a few lines of dialogue before throwing a punch to salvage a little physical comedy. And the other performances aren't much better.

The cast is second string. Zach Galifianakis is the dim-witted character who would have been better played by Jack Black. Ed Helms is the poor man's Stephen Colbert. And Bradley Cooper is an imperfect version of Matthew McConaughey.

Heather Graham seems to understand there's no reason to bring her best acting game to this movie. All she has to do is giggle a few lines and help the plodding plot crawl along.

The director even wastes his neon-filled setting. Phillips manages to make Las Vegas look more like Reno. There's no sense of how big the city is except for a couple of shots from the top of a building.

"The Hangover" fails to be as sophomoric as "Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation." It lacks the darkness of "Very Bad Things." About the only thing this movie is good for is discouraging heavy drinking. You'd think twice about risking a hangover after this.