Anyone
who’s seen the trailers and promos for the last—fingers crossed—installment of The Hangover franchise knows that, among
other instances of senseless animal cruelty, Todd Phillips’ Part III features giraffe decapitation
by highway underpass. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to. It’s not very
funny, and completely tangential to the plot, but then a lot of things are. The
problem is it takes place in the first five minutes, and the movie tries really
really hard to top it for the remaining hour and a half. It fails.
There
are some movies that should stand alone; sequels, prequels, remakes, and
spin-offs can only harm their reputation. The first Hangover is one of these movies. Perhaps the funniest and most entertaining
film of 2009, it was an uproariously hilarious lowbrow achievement of raunch, profanity,
and political incorrectness, and a modernized, twisted return to a simpler,
gentler age (circa 1980) when bros and boobs ruled the comedic screen. Part II made the mistake of trying to
outdo it, but, although inferior to its predecessor and patently unoriginal,
replicating every situation of the first with mechanical obligation, it was
still a good time. Part III tries to
top both movies. Combined. Losing the expected, exciting backtracking structure—and
any sort of boozing and hangovers, debauchery and fun, for that matter—this Hangover does away with the comedy
almost entirely, replacing laughs with the half-parodied, predictable conventions
of a bad, exposition-heavy B-movie caper played chronologically and completely
soberly.
