Doug Billings (Justin Bartha) is getting married in two days, and his best friends Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper) and dentist Dr. Stu Price (Ed Helms) are taking him to Vegas for his bachelor party. Unfortunately, the groom's freakish future brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) is tagging along as well. With their villa at Caesar's Palace secured, they head up to the hotel roof for a round of shots before hitting the strip. The next morning, Doug is gone and the remaining 'party' members awake in a sea of destruction. Stu has lost a tooth. There's a newborn baby in the closet. And there's a real man-eating tiger in the bathroom. Having no recollection of what transpired the night before, Phil, Stu, and Alan begin searching for their missing pal. Along the way, they run into Asian gangsters, Mike Tyson, and Stu's quickie stripper bride Jade (Heather Graham) -- but no Doug. And time is running out before the groom has to walk down the aisle.
The Hangover is a very funny film, the cinematic equivalent of Jell-O shots. It takes the standard notion of a boys' night out and turns it into part gross-out gag fest, part 'what comes next' mystery. Phillips brings a certain darkness to the material, a genuine sense of danger that comes across clearly and often. It doesn't take away from the humor, but it does make the eventual revelations about the night's events all the more unexpected. In fact, what's most shocking about The Hangover is that it was scripted by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the dunderheaded duo who gave us the awful Four Christmases and the equally lame Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Clearly, they've had some kind of wit epiphany, or Phillips is the right man for their material.
But this movie really belongs to longtime stand-up Galifianakis. As Alan, Doug's baggage-riddled soon-to-be relative, this man-purse carrying closeted savant is so unhinged, so completely and utterly disconnected with reality, that he can make even the most ludicrous question ('Is this the 'real' Caesar's palace?') into psychotic haiku. All throughout The Hangover, Phillips turns the lens toward Galifianakis just to see what kind of fever dream dementia will come crawling out of his maw, and the comedian never disappoints. He steals the movie away from Cooper and Helms, who are both outstanding as the relative extremes (partier, pragmatist) who come to see the other's particular point of view.
Yet the only thing you really need to know about The Hangover is that it's side-splitting. Phillips piles on the jokes, keeping the comic tension taut and never once letting us come up for air. There are moments of scatological physical shtick as well as a few chosen moments with a welcome ex-champ (indeed, stay for the credits for more outlandish Vegas cameos). In a genre recently overrun by Judd Apatow and his cadre of friends, The Hangover more than holds its own. It's easily one of the funniest films of the year.
The DVD includes theatrical and unrated cuts of the film (the unrated one is an extra eight minutes in length), plus a gag reel, improv sequences, more 'lost' photos, and more.
About that bridal suite...
