Hungover from The Hangover

I think I'm a guy who could handle Vegas.

Even the tiger.

Even Mike Tyson.

Maybe not Heather Graham though.

But I'd sure make a valiant effort.

I was prepared to like The Hangover, mainly on the grounds that it was giving the blonde and me an excuse not to go see Transformers 2 with the Mannion guys.  I was prepared, thanks to some friends' surprised reactions, to see a better movie than I would have expected from the posters which made it look like another slob comedy about a trio of doofuses making bigger doofuses of themselves.  I was prepared for a smarter and funnier movie than anything Will Farrell's been in lately.  I wasn't prepared for how smart and funny it is in its own right.  The Hangover is one of the smartest and funniest comedies I've seen since Office Space.

The blonde's capsule review:  "I liked it because they never explained the chicken."

That pretty much sums up what's beautiful about this movie.   They never explain the chicken or almost anything else.  An awful lot is left unexplained, half-explained, implied, casually glossed over, and left up in the air.  Events, lines of dialogues, appearances and reappearances of various characters, whole scenes that seem to be explanations turn out to need explanations themselves.

"Oh!  That's who the tiger belongs to!" we say, but it's only later that it dawns on us that we never find out what the owner is doing in the movie or how it happens that he owns a tiger.

This works because the movie is so well-paced, so tightly plotted, so economically played by its cast, and so intelligently and efficiently directed that our focus is kept on the screen.  Our minds don't have a second's free time in which to wander off to think about how implausible any of this is.

Director Todd Philips and screen writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore operated on the principle "You don't need to know."  And we don't and don't get to.  We don't know anything more about the night before than the main characters know and we don't learn any more than they do.

Philips, Lucas, and Scott must have begun work asking themselves, What's the problem with the typical comedy these days?

Their answer was, Showing too much.  Things get over the top and out of control too fast.

Their solution was to not to just to show less, but to show almost nothing at all.

They must have listened to the ghost of W.C. Fields whose guiding principle of comedy was whenever you feel like doing more, do less.

The Hangover isn't about what happened in Vegas.  It's about where to go next.  Phil, Stu, and Alan are naturally curious about the night they can't remember---Stu especially would like to know what happened to his tooth---but they are more concerned with another question.  "Where is Doug?"  They've lost their friend and they're determined to find him and that task keeps them too busy to worry about the night before, except in as much that it gives them clues to what's become of Doug.  They don't want, don't need, and don't gather all the details, only what helps them move on to their next misadventure in a spot where Doug was but now isn't.

I'm taking too long to say what I liked.  Philips, Lucas, and Scott leave it up to us to explain the chicken.

They give us just enough information to stimulate our imagination and then leave it up to us to decide how much about last night we want to envision.

Wondering how crazy and out of control things got keeps us distracted just enough that we can forget to notice how crazy and out of control things going on before our eyes are.  Compared to what might have happened, the naked lunatic leaping from the trunk to attack them with a tire iron can beat our heroes senseless and flee without our thinking much of it.  In fact, it's kind of a disappointment when the lunatic shows up again, dressed, and almost explains himself.  Almost.

The movie's three leading men, Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galifianakis are all masters of the Fields' principle of doing less.  Cooper is already on his way to becoming a star, but in a just world an actor as good as Ed Helms ought to be on his way too, despite the fact that he looks like Ed Helms.  He ought to be starring in lots of romantic comedies in the future, none of them produced or directed by Judd Apatow, whose nice guys get the babes self-pity fests Helms' character in The Hangover slyly refutes---Stu's problem is that he's a nice guy.  He gets the babe by learning how not to be so nice.  It makes him a better man.

I'm not sure what to make of  Galifianakis.  He kind of creeped me out and I don't think it was just his character.

Justin Bartha as the lost groom, Doug, doesn't have as much to do to do less with, but he's an important presence in the movie, and not just because he makes Doug the kind of guy we want to be found and reunited with his bride-to-be in time for their wedding, but also because he isn't a nice guy.  He's a decent guy.  His basic decency is the glue that holds the gang together and if The Hangover is about anything serious, it's about learning to be decent.  Phil and Stu think they are rescuing Doug, but in a way he's saving them, by leaving them to take care of Alan and each other.

In the end, their rewards for learning this lesson are as much left to our imaginations as what happened to them.  I said Stu gets the babe.  But we don't actually know that.  All we know is that he is now in a position where he could get the babe.

What will happen next is like the chicken.
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The Mannion guys reported that Transformers 2 was not as good as the original but sill pretty good.  They didn't sound all that sure of their judgment though.

On the other hand, Charlie Jane Anders was completely blown away by it, declaring Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie.

Hmmm.  You think Anders might be kidding?

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Unrelated movie news:  Bob Westal says goodbye to Karl Malden.

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

it was giving the blonde and I an excuse

Lance, say it ain't so!

[Dan Leo]

Uh-oh!

[Apostate]

Stu's problem is that he's a nice guy. He gets the babe by learning how not to be so nice. It makes him a better man.

Whut? I LIKE nice guys. Not Nice Guys(TM), but real nice guys. I make it a point not to hang with assholes, no matter how attractive some of them sometimes are. It never ends well.

I'm gonna have to see The Hangover. Whoever that guy is on the phone in the first picture, he's hawt.

[Dan]

I'm pretty disappointed that you are so positive about this misogynistic dreck. Explain to me why (both) women in this movie with more than ~3 lines need to be -- literally -- cheating, emasculating bitches or whores. Why pedophilia is played for laughs. Why a rapist -- an actual convicted rapist -- appears in the movie and it's supposed to be funny.

I will grant you that there are some funny lines, and there are some unconventional elements of this movie that do make it stand out from the typical buddy-comedy genre. But I kinda felt sick after I watched it, and it really makes me sad to see it do so well at the box office.

[achangeinthewind]

Finally a movie Lance and I can agree on. Yes, "The Hangover" is all that, and maybe even more. I too liked the fact that they didn't explain too much about it (although that was something of an issue with the bad guy, at least for me). Plus, this movie has perhaps the funniest credit sequence in the history of cinema. No, I'm not lying. See it and tell me I'm wrong -- I dare you.