Thank God.
Hangover the Third is an incredible achievement. Uproariously tedious. Hilariously worthless. Just Magnificently dull and unnecessary.
It is a fascinating social experiment and a triumph in marketing. Dubbed the closing chapter of ‘the Wolfpack Trilogy’ (aren’t they all called ‘The Hangover’?), though if we’re going to be granting nicknames that sum up the films, better name it The Lollipop Trilogy, because Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Ghostbusteriasis) have been making suckers of dopes like me for a full five years now.
After Alan’s dad is killed by a decapitated giraffe – in a roundabout way – Alan continues along parallel to rails he has long since ran off. Speaking of ‘off’, he is also off his meds for six months and running wild, leading to the ‘crew’ (none of whom seem to like him by the way) staging a reluctant intervention. The result of which is a two day road trip to a facility for Alan to dry out and come to gri…
Nope. Cancel that. Instead an unwanted and unexpected intervention by still another third party sees Doug waylaid yet again, and Phil, Stu and Alan are tasked with tracking down the unpredictable Mr Chow (Ken Jeung) within three days. And off they go killing joy and spreading feelings of unfortunate déjà vu across many countries.
The attempted humour is generated in two ways, how dumb Alan is, and how dumb Mr Chow is. Bradley Cooper does nothing but swear. Ed Helms refers to previous shenanigans instead of summoning the energy to try new ones. At least facial tattoos and missing teeth got him noticed. He might as well have missed this intervention. Doug is… is the fact that we never care about Doug being taken proof that the man playing him has less than zero charisma? I vote yes.
Which brings us to Alan, and Galapogastortoise ups the ante on his ‘reacting to everything like a five year old’ shtick by added a nasty streak. He’s like a real life version of Homer Simpson without a single joke. Another triumph.
In fact I cannot fathom why Alan warrants an intervention. Aside from a terminal case of douchiness here he is quite placidly behaved. Actually no-one does anything particularly uproarious except Mr Chow, who at least is perpetually under the influence of a lethal speedball of everything available on the dingiest street corner.
The least enjoyable part about over-celebrating is when everyone stops drinking. The first hangover they never stopped. The second seemed to run through the motions but at least they tried in vain to one up their earlier effort. No-one drinks in the third. It is painful, awkward and gives me a headache. Just like a real hangover.
The Hangover 3 is the final part of the trilogy not because it’s the logical end to the story, or even because they ran out of ideas. They ran out of ideas after the first film. It is because director Todd Phillips is like the schoolyard bully who was held back three years and towers over his schoolmates. After three films of telling us idiots what to do and stealing our lunch movie money, he is bored and has invoked his own mercy rule.
Final Rating – 5 / 10. After the highlight arrives into the CREDITS you’ll be the one who feels like drinking heavily. My advice is to buy tickets to whatever screens after this, then arrive early and try to catch the credits. Whatever the film after will undoubtedly be better than this one…
Won’t make nearly as much money as this does though.
Suckers are we…
