Review: The Hangover Part III

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha.
Director: Todd Phillips

In a few words...: The Wolfpack is back, and goes back to where it all began: Las Vegas
 
Rating: 4/10

Beware: SPOILERS AHEAD

2009's The Hangover was the breakout comedy that the 2000's hadn't had, and the second installment of what is now a nicely-rounded trilogy, was funny, but there was less excitement than the first, simply because it was almost a carbon copy. In The Hangover, you had no idea what would happen next, except to know that it would be hilarious and outrageous. The Hangover Part II was, at times, predictable. Funny, certainly, but you got a sense that you knew what was coming. The Hangover Part III, however, is just plain tired.

This time around, there are no bachelor parties, no weddings, and not even a freakin' hangover during the 100 minutes of movie just the Wolfpack reuniting on what seems like a straightforward mission: after staging an intervention, they agree to transport Alan (Galifianakis, who steals the show, once again) to a rehab clinic. On the way, somehow, trouble finds the group, and they end up in Mexico on the trail of crazed, cocaine-crazy gangster, Mr Chow (Ken Jeong, the other break-out star of this franchise), doing so at the behest of a crime lord (John Goodman) who has captured Doug (Bartha) and will kill him if the others don't return the gold reserves that Chow stole during a breakout from a Bangkok prison.

The major problem with this film is, basically, it isn't funny. After all the hype, it's a disappointing let down. I was really looking forward to this film, but it fell in a heap early on. Sure, there are some moments that make you laugh pretty hard, but in this film, they're few and far between, and, in those intervening moments, Todd Phillips tries to craft some sort of action film with car chases and armed gunman and John Goodman's barely convincing gangster, tied into the events of the first film in the loosest way possible.

You're not at all surprised when the action shifts to Las Vegas, the scene of the riotous original, for it seems like the right thing to end the trilogy where it began. Actually, it's almost a relied. I found myself hoping that a return to Vegas would signal a return to the comic magic of the first movie. Alas, it doesn't happen that way, instead, we get a bad action-style sequence where Alan and Phil (Cooper, who looks bored in most of this film) imitate James Bond in using towels to scale their way down into Mr Chow's Caesar's Palace penthouse. Heather Graham's appearance as the ex-stripper/ex-wife of Stu, Jade, adds little to the story, too, and Alan's interaction with Jade's four-year-old son - the one from the first film - is downright creepy.

Half the problem, I believe, is that the film focuses most on the characters of Alan and Mr Chow, and the others, Stu and Phil and Doug, are so one-dimensional that they're relegated to the back seat in this film. That would perhaps be okay if Alan and Mr Chow were likeable characters. The thing is, they're not. Alan's a racist creep with a list of indecent exposure charges thicker than Tolstoy's War and Peace - you see it at one point in the film - and Chow is a violent druggie who has no qualms about turning on the people he calls his friends.

All in all, it's a sad end to a franchise that promised so much. Box office takings will be interesting, because all the press buzz has been decidedly negative, and having seen the film, I understand why. It's as though the cast and crew just mailed this one in. Perhaps the best bit is the post-credit sequence, something more remiiscent of the first two films, and it's in there almost as an afterthought, almost an admission that they missed so badly on the stuff between the title screens that it was pushed in there as an apology.

Start the film where the coda ended and they might've been onto another winner. Instead, it's the end of the end, and The Hangover Part III will likely go down in history as as a tired, bored, semi-effort, and, as it should be the last we see of the Wolfpack, it missed a golden opportunity to scrub The Hangover Part II from everyone's memory. Instead, we'll all now remember the second film as the second best one, and probably not bother much with the third.

Disappointing.