The Hangover: Dude, Where’s My Friend?

Todd Phillips’ latest boys-club comedy, The Hangover was vulgar, vapid, ludicrous, disgusting, and incredibly offensive. Morally, I object to it on almost every level – or at least I know I should. But truth is I nearly peed myself. And you will too, because, dude, it was damn funny.

What starts out as a typical bachelor party in a fancy Las Vegas Suite quickly devolves into a lecherous, completely insane and highly unlikely night of debauchery after the four friends accidentally get roofied. Waking up the next morning in various states of ridiculousness – missing teeth, missing pants, missing shirts (nice Bradley Cooper) – the hung over fellas realize that they’re also missing their friend, the groom.

So the boys go in search of their lost buddy, Doug (Justin Bartha), in the hopes of getting him back in time for his wedding, and in their search, discover that they got into a whole lot of incredible trouble the night before. There’s not much that happens to the boys that’s slightly believable. It’s true “some guys just can’t handle Vegas”, but few get roofied, kidnapped, arrested, hospitalized, married, marred, tasered, rich, and transformed into raging kleptomaniacs all in one night. At least, I’m pretty sure. Believable or not, the boy-men’s drunken misadventures in Sin City are made highly entertaining by its stereotypical boy-men: goofy goodie-goodie Dentist Stu (Ed Helms), bordering on mentally-challenged Alan (Zach Galifianakis), and arrogant, handsome instigator Phil (Bradley Cooper).

Helms hones his comedy muscles as the nice, good guy – heavily beaten into submission by his iron fisted girlfriend (Rachael Harris). Horribly for him and luckily for us, straight-laced Stu’s the one that made the most mistakes of anyone in his forgotten evening and struggles to figure out how he’s going to fix what his uninhibited self did. Galifianakis – who’s been shaking up funnyordie.com with his “Between Two Ferns” interviews – continues to demonstrate his skills at making you feel really, really uncomfortable by saying things no one would ever say, ever. Galifianakis’ character certainly has not a shred of social grace or awareness, which results in some brilliantly awkward hilarity and a lot more nudity than I’d really like from Galifianakis. In fact there was a lot of nudity in this film that I didn’t really need to see. However, the skin was appreciated when it came to Bradley Cooper.

I’ve seen Cooper in a lot of things from Alias to He’s Just Not That Into You, but I’ve never seen him as a leading man material. Well, I take it back. Cooper’s wicked, sarcastic, and devilishly-handsome Phil was the smart ass who made the whole thing watchable. Plus, the poor guy really wanted to find his friend – it was almost endearing. Almost.

Full of gross-out humor, physical comedy, slapstick, and memorable one-liners, Hangover is a movie every guy you know will be quoting and rehashing by weekend’s end.  From Mike Tyson’s cameo to Heather Graham’s rack (certainly not her acting – or total lack thereof), to the “naked man” (Ken Jeong) attack there’s plenty of idiotic, bizarre situations to pull from. As such, it would be easy to dismiss The Hangover as another boys club film, hell-bent on being outrageous, but it crosses the line so boldly that – unlike the boys – you won’t forget this boys’ night soon.