THE HANGOVER (Todd Phillips). 100 minutes. Opens Friday (June 5). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
Sometimes it’s okay if a comedy doesn’t break new ground. It just has to work. And by the time The Hangover gets to the musical number where Ed Helms sings a lullaby to Mike Tyson’s drugged tiger, well, it’s working.
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The Hangover casts Helms, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis as a trio of groomsmen who wake up in Las Vegas to discover they have quite definitively lost control of their bachelor party.
They can’t remember anything about the last 12 hours, their hotel suite is a disaster area, and the groom is missing. Retracing their steps just leads to more trouble – see above re tiger.
Sure, this is the same engine that drives everything from The Night Before to Dude, Where’s My Car? But it’s a sturdy engine, and Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have structured their screenplay to grow increasingly complicated and frenzied as the clock ticks down to that wedding.
The cast is up to the challenge. Helms expands the tightly wound sucker he plays on The Office into a chipper dentist trapped in a miserable relationship and thus prone to acting out in a fairly cataclysmic manner, while Galifianakis applies his deadpan rhythms to the role of the bride’s socially awkward brother.
Putative star Cooper spends most of his time playing their straight man, but he handles it with frazzled grace and comes off looking pretty good.
