Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Hangover Part III [MA]


After being nabbed in Bangkok, Leslie Chow has escaped and is now back at large. After staging an intervention for Alan Phil, Stu, and Doug are on the road taking him to a clinic when they are attacked and captured by a mean mother called Marshall whose stash of gold bricks has been stolen by Chow. As Alan was the only one in contact with Chow when he was inside, the Wolf Pack are charged with finding Chow and getting Marshall’s gold back within three days or else Marshall will take the blow out on Doug. 

It’s a good thing that I went to see this movie without having any hopes for it at all. It’s the law of cinematic series that one from the bunch is just going to be not as good as the others. The Hangover Part III wasn’t a Hangover movie: structurally it was completely different from its predecessors and I felt that it really was a classic example of producers milking good films for all their worth, like Pirates of the Caribbean. The tiniest of details that we all missed or didn’t bother paying attention to in the very first one suddenly become integral plot points in this movie and you really have to sit there and think ‘man you guys are really clutching at straws aren’t you?’ 

After being nabbed in Bangkok, Leslie Chow has escaped and is now back at large. After staging an intervention for Alan Phil, Stu, and Doug are on the road taking him to a clinic when they are attacked and captured by a mean mother called Marshall whose stash of gold bricks has been stolen by Chow. As Alan was the only one in contact with Chow when he was inside, the Wolf Pack are charged with finding Chow and getting Marshall’s gold back within three days or else Marshall will take the blow out on Doug. 

You just can’t believe any of the seriousness in this movie. Because the ties to the first and second flicks are so flaky, you’ve just got to sit there and mindlessly absorb what’s on the screen hoping violently that something really funny happens. This end of the trilogy saw the characters and the relationships between them take a more emotionally dramatic turn with the criticising banter between Stu and Phil lapsing quickly, a stronger bond sparking between Alan and Phil, and of course Alan actually being able to see that’s it’s really time to grow up. We’ve got no impending marriage therefore, no bachelor party and hangover, but there are multiple twists and turns of the plot. Unfortunately, there are no fun and bizarre situations in this movie like there were in the first two and there’s a greater sense of seriousness about the whole thing that’s fine, but just not very in keeping with the stories and characters that we’ve come to know and love. Even the second one had a good level of fucked up randomness. 
Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, John Goodman, Heather Graham, Jeffrey Tambor, Mike Epps, Sasha Barrese, Jamie Chung, and Melissa McCarthy, The Hangover Part III was an all right movie but it wasn’t a Hangover movie. Filled with action, violence, friendship, drama, and comedy it’d be fine if it weren’t part of a trilogy. I do feel that this trilogy idea came after the first film did so well at the box office and people in higher places thought ‘let’s get more money out of it and churn out two more’. 
The plot is jaggedly put together like a kindergarten collage, the cast don’t insert themselves as much as they did in the other two, and the whole thing took this rather deep and dramatic turn that is just unbecoming. 

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