Summer Movie Review: The Hangover

When I saw the previews and initial advertisements for The Hangover, I'm not gonna lie, I thought it looked average at best. But in the weeks leading up to this movie, I had not seen or heard one bad review about The Hangover. That was when I started to do a little bit of research for it, and was please when I found out that it was from the director of Old School, and that Ed Helms was in it. For those of you who have been living under a rock, this movie topped the box office for the last two weeks. It cost $35,000,000 to make, and has grossed $110, 299, 949 in 11 days. Pretty freakin' impressive if you ask me. Based on some of these things, and about 30 of my friends saying it was the funniest movie they've seen in a long while, I just had to go. And I did.

A quick plot synopsis(bear with me, I don't remember the names). A guy is getting married somewhere in southern California and on the weekend before his wedding he goes to Las Vegas for his bachelor party with two of his best friends, one being a middle/high school teacher, the other being a dentist, and his future brother in law who doesn't really have any friends due to his odd personality and appearance. The four of them plan on going out and partying harder than rockstars, and as they have a celebratory drink prior to going out, you next find them woken up the next morning trying without any clue as to what happenen that night, and the groom to be is missing. Throughout the rest of the movie, it is the three guys gathering clues and trying to track down their friend and figure out what the heck happened the night before.

Now the best part about a plot line like that, is because *anything* could have gone on without it being unreasonable, based on how they feel when they woke up the next morning. They did themselves a lot of drinking which could have potentially lead to anything, and that is where the genius of this movie lies. As a viewer, you lose focus on "wow that is so completely unrealistic" which can single handedly ruin a movie. Believe me, I am not going to post any jokes or times where you could should pay extra attention to, because I hate spoilers as much as the next guy, and if you have friends, then I'm sure you have probably already heard 75% of the quotes from it.

I really enjoyed this movie. I honestly do not think it was nearly as funny as everyone made it out to be, however I feel like if I saw this movie before all of my friends and a lot of places saying it is the funniest movie on the planet and they would see it again in a heartbeat. I was very pleased and satisfied when I left the theater, which was a great feeling because it got rid of the sour taste in my mouth that was left over from Terminator: Salvation.

One of my favorite TV shows is The Office, and Helms character of Andy Bernard is my favorite character in the show. One things I loved about The Hangover was that it showed Ed Helms playing a different character, and he absolutely nailed it. To my knowledge this is the first major character he has played since getting his role as Andy, and it is refreshing to see him not fall into a typecast(see Cera, Michael). Sure, a lot of people could have played that role and done very well at it, but it was refreshing to see Helms do so well.

My rating: 3.9 out of 5. Why might you ask? Well as far as recent comedies go, I put this one just a smidge below Superbad, which I would have given a 4 out a 5 if I had a blog back then. While I would still recommend this movie to absolutely everyone in the age demographic it is targeting, I need to give it a 3.9. I can't even think of a comedy that I would consider giving over a 4, however there probably is. What I'm getting at, is that while I love comedies, it is going to take a lot for it to be even close to a 5 due to the nature of being able to score laughs.

One way or another, go see this movie, and if you look young, bring your ID's because I've heard of a lot of people saying that they were carded going into this movie.

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