The Hangover Part II has gotten a reaction that could only be described at the polar opposite of the accolades heaped upon its sleeper predecessor. The Hangover was a refreshing high-concept comedy in the middle of a summer stuffed with branded product. The movie opens with a disheveled Bradley Cooper, donning aviators in the middle of the desert, on the phone informing a bride-to-be that her wedding wasn’t going to happen. Follow that with an ominous opening credit sequence set to Danzig’s “Thirteen”, and you knew you were in for something good.
By contrast, The Hangover Part II opens in almost the exact same way, this time Bradley Cooper taking on the same desperate tone on the phone atop a building in Bangkok, exclaiming “It happened again.” Cue another Danzig song. This brings forward the criticism that has been almost universally leveled at The Hangover Part II: it’s the same damn movie. Instead of a Vegas, you have Bangkok. Instead of Mike Tyson’s flesh-hungry tiger, we have a smoking monkey in a Rolling Stones Jacket. Instead of Stu losing his tooth, he gets a tattoo, and so on, and so forth. It’s no surprise that the movie has gotten a ton of stick from critics for being formulaic. However, while The Hangover Part II is essentially a copy of its predecessor, it’s also a more accomplished film from director Todd Phillips.
The first two films in Phillips’ career defined his approach, and they were documentaries, not the type of Hollywood comedy Phillips has become known for. The first was Hated, a documentary on psychotic punk rocker GG Allin, in which Phillips followed the late mentally insane “musician” around with a camera and chronicled his exploits. The film features shocking footage of Allin performing naked on stage, screaming into a microphone while wallowing in his own feces, before he openly attacks audience members and the police inevitably break it up. Allin was a shock rocker who made Marilyn Manson look like a Franciscan monk, and his penchant for taking just a bit too far has informed the work Phillips has done since.
The other is Frat House, a documentary for HBO that the network decided, for whatever reason, not to air. What Phillips depicts in this one is the herd mentality of the college fraternity, and the freshman that reject their individuality in a desperate and pathetic attempt to be accepted by a larger group. In an interview with Elvis Mitchell on KCRW’s The Treatment, Phillips told Mitchell that he has always had a fascination with the way most men have a need to be a part of a larger group of guys in their search for identity.
Cut to The Hangover films, in which Zach Galifinakis’ oddball character, Allen, finds happiness in identifying himself as a member of what he has dubbed “The Wolf Pack,” a group that consists of him, Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Doug (Justin Bartha). Stu is getting married to his fiancé (oddly not Heather Graham’s character, the hooker with the heart of gold he fell for in the original) in Thailand. He finds himself bonding with Teddy (Mason Lee), the favorite son of his stern future father-in-law, but when he takes Teddy to the beach with the boys to have an evening beer, they wake up the next morning in a seedy Bangkok hotel room with no Teddy. So begins another journey to piece together a crazy evening none of them can remember.
While formulaic, the reason The Hangover Part II is more accomplished is that it sees Phillips improving as a filmmaker. The Vegas setting of the original is one that is synonymous with debauchery, as Jeffrey Tambor’s character informs Doug, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas…except for herpes, that shit’ll come back with you.” But Bangkok is a more alien setting, waking up with no memory of the night before in Vegas would be less terrifying than finding yourself hungover in a foreign city with a seedy reputation that you don’t even remember partying in to begin with.
The overall vibe that The Hangover Part II has is more dangerous. In the original they woke up in their once posh Vegas suite to find a Tiger in the bathroom, and a baby in the closet. Here, they find a severed finger and a corpse, and the fear they experience is as terrifying as it is funny. The success of The Hangover may have enabled Phillips to go further with the gross-out gags, which reach John Waters levels of crass when the frightening reputation of Bangkok’s sex industry rears its head, resulting in some truly hideous hide-your-eyes moments (I should note that this is a compliment). Once we get to Allen’s hilarious surrealist meditation on the night before, the car chases and exploding pigs, it almost feels like all bets are off.
It’s unfortunate that the wheels fall off once the formula truly sets in, which comes just before the point in which we reach the opening phone call we see prior to the credits. It’s where this sequel runs out of surprises. Still, Phillips is showing more and more definition as a filmmaker with each movie he makes. His creative use of music is also rarely mentioned. The use of Danzig in The Hangover was inspired, and here he uses Billy Joel’s “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” and Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” with equal brilliance. As far as this writer is concerned, Phillips is up there with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino when it comes to the marriage of pop music and feature filmmaking. The criticisms The Hangover Part II have received when it comes to resorting to formula are valid, but when put in the context of Phillips’ career as a director, one can only say that the man is progressing. If they change things up with The Hangover Part III like they are promising, it should be interesting.
PS: Todd Phillips, if you don’t use this song in The Hangover Part III, you’re doing it wrong.
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