BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
If you haven’t seen ‘The Hangover’ or ‘The Hangover part II’ then why is this paragraph even in front of you? Obviously, we’ve ALL seen ‘The Hangover’ a few dozen times because it was one of the greatest R rated comedies to come out in the at least the past decade. In time I think it’ll measure up with the all-time comedy classics. It’s just a great experience for sure. Then, like a lot of people, I’ve only seen the sequel about two or three times tops. It was fun, but not as good. The bar was raised so high with the original that it would have been hard to reach those expectations to begin with. The problem was the movie felt like a carbon copy of the first movie. It just didn’t capture that magic. Still good, but not great. By this point there seemed to be a small “cool kid” backlash of lots of critics and reviewers talking shit about not only the second movie, but not the original too. I don’t get that shit, but whatever. When I heard the third installment was coming out, I was still interested. It was said to be the last of the franchise so why not see how the story closes out? I think they earned that much from comedy fans and movie goers. So I finally got to see this movie and I really enjoyed it! Was it as good as the first movie? Nope. I can’t think of many movies that are. Was it as good as the sequel? Nope. It was A LOT better. This movie was right up my alley. One of the biggest complaints I keep reading for some stupid reason is that it’s a “darker” movie. I liked that. When crazy and vulgar things happen are the characters supposed to act just as shocked and surprised as they did in the first movie? What sense would that make? They’ve grown a thicker layer of skin and I think the result was awesome. The movie was darker because the innocence is long gone. You already know crazy shit is going to go down when these guys get together. I’m glad Todd Phillips didn’t try to spoon feed us the same stuff. He let the characters evolve in the world he created. I’m also a big fan of the music choices of this movie. Instead of having tons of poppy rap songs transition us from scene to scene, it was “edgier”. Nine Inch Nails is my band of all time so my mind was blown to hear “Hurt” included in two very different scenes. I’ve seen Trent Reznor sing this song live and cry over ten years after it was originally written. I’m still a bit shocked he’d let it get used in such an “ironic” and “weird” kind of way. I’m still startled by it. Then we got some of “Mother” by Danzig, Black Sabbath, and Billy Joel. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the music in the first movie will make it seem “dated” come ten years from now. That’s an interesting thing to think about. Regardless of my over analysis of the music, I genuinely loved this movie. I won’t get too far into the plot because like all of these movies, it’s something you need to experience and go along with on the ride. The back and forth banter between Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis was great. There is a part where Cooper is hanging for his life off the top of a building from a shoddy sheet and he doesn’t flip out when Zach has him stop and take a picture mid-hang. In fact, he accepts the situation and asks “Did you get it?” THAT was great. There was a lot of little moments like this between all the main characters. Ed Helms’s ‘Stu’ was more annoying in this movie than the others, but even that made sense. This movie also tied up loose ends from the first movie. Yes, a movie that was all about tying up every possible loose end STILL had loose ends. Between some great cameos, returning locations, and a surprisingly well build backstory, the call backs to the first movie were perfect. To me, outside of the Mr. Chow tie-in from ‘part II’, this movie felt like the real sequel to the original. It’s a lot like the ‘Karate Kid’ trilogy. Part one was amazing, part two went overseas and then part three tied up the loose ends of part one. See this movie. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not funny or not good. Watch it, enjoy it, and decide for yourself how awesome it is. I’m going to miss the “Wolfpack”, but this was a great finish to the best trilogy of modern comedy. Seriously, it is! A-
|
