Review: ‘The Hangover Part III’

To be fair there has never been a comedy sequel that improved on the original, so why did any of us expect “The Hangover Part III” to really be all that good, even after ‘The Hangover Part II” kind of let us all down after “The Hangover” kicked everyone’s asses? They ditched the tired conceit of trying to recap their lost night and replaced it with a more straight forward story, and they all ditched the concept of this movie being a comedy and replaced that with a weird thriller involving kidnappings, druggings, murder and prison breaks.  Also one of the main characters going off his meds and just being unhinged and wild eyed the entire more. And I’m not talking about Bradley Cooper.

“The Hangover Part III” starts with Alan (Zach Galifianakis, The Campaign) off his meds and causing so much damage that he literally gives his father a heart attack from all the stress, which then leads to his family sending him off to an an institution of some sort to “get better.” His old wolfpack buddies Stu (Ed Helms, Cedar Rapids) and Phil (Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook) agree to accompany Alan and his brother-in-law Doug (Justin Bartha, Gigli) on the long trip to this place. But on the way they are kidnapped by henchmen and tasked with finding Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong, Pain & Gain), who stole millions of dollars from some bad guy named Marshall (John Goodman, Flight), a bad guy who blames the entrance of the cancerous Mr. Chow into his life all to a chance encounter between Alan and Doug the drug dealer (Mike Epps, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Resident Evil: Extinction) all the way back in the first movie. So the Wolfpack has to find Mr. Chow and bring him to Marshall, or else Marshall is going to kill Doug, kidnapping him, and again removing the character from the equation once again, because who wants to see Justin Bartha do anything except sit quietly at gunpoint?

This time around we have the same three characters with whom we are now very familiar and comfortable but instead of solving the mystery of what they did the night before this time they have to find Mr. Chow, which is pretty easy actually, it’s the getting-Mr. Chow-back-to-Marshall part that is tough, and there are double crosses and triple crosses and subterfuge and trickery and alarm disabling and burglarizing and gun shots and action and then there are also a couple of jokes here and there. There is definitely humor in this movie, but to call it a comedy would be a stretch, and the humor in the movie all seems to be coming from some very dark place, it’s all rooted in some sort of angst and depression that then seeped into this story of a guy trying to get his gold back from some homicidal maniac and that maniac roping some idiots in to unwittingly helping him.

“The Hangover Part III” is sadly lacking in big defining moments. The opening with Alan and his new pet giraffe is funny, but 95% of this is shown in the trailers anyway, so it lacked real punch. There are no “tigers in the bathroom” or Mike Tyson type moments in this, not even anything on the level of a smoking monkey and a transgender sex club, it’s really a kind of low rent thriller with the funniest bits truly shown in the marketing. As a comedy, if it is ever trying to be that, it pretty much fails to bring any big laughs and settles instead for some chuckles and smirks.

That’s not to say necessarily that this is a bad movie, it’s just not the movie that anyone was expecting. Sure “The Hangover Part II” got significantly uglier and darker than the first movie, but it still went for the big laughs and embraced the over the top ridiculousness. This one goes darker still, but pulls back on the comedy, and makes it more of an uncomfortable ride – who the hell are we supposed to be rooting for in this instance? Alan is friends with Mr. Chow and Mr. Chow is insane and doesn’t give a shit about anybody, but then Marshall is a big goon who loves to shoot people to make his point so he’s no great shakes either, and the Wolfpack just does whatever people tell them to do and just hope that it all works out in the end, which is kind of lame, they don’t really do anything outside of what they are forced to do. It’s kind of weird.

And they also went with Alan this time to focus on a character arc, as Stu got to be the guy to learn lessons the first two times out (poor Phil, just along for the ride, not really ever defined as a character outside of awesome hair and sunglasses and a begrudging liking of Alan), but it really isn’t so clear how he learned his lesson necessarily. He did learn one, a lesson about how he did have to change the way he was living and be more mindful of those around him, but this transformation seems to come from a chance encounter with a young child, and all of a sudden his mental health improves, albeit slightly. Then again, these movies were never really known for their character development or thematic elements, so at least they threw something in there to latch on to, otherwise this would just be a movie about a bunch of assholes doing shit. Well, I guess that’s still what it is.

Well that’s a wrap for “The Hangover” series, and really, when we all look back on it all, I am sure we can agree that we wish they just stuck with one movie and called it a day. Oh well.