The Hangover panders to the immature

Make no mistake — this is an adult movie, but don’t call it mature. Also don’t expect a lot of women in the audience. There will be so few of them who want to watch fictional men behaving poorly when they can watch it pretty much anywhere in the real world for free. Note to guys: this is not a date movie either.

Many secondary sources (only male ones, interestingly) proposed that this was the funniest film that they had seen in a long time.

Apparently, tastes vary wildly among men.

With high hopes, I found myself struggling to find the humour. Maybe it’s because so many men actually do these things that besmirch our sex. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have anything to do with realism, just plausibility.

Either way, what a self-gender-slander this is.

The Hangover is a story about a group of guys — friends and relatives — who are coming together to celebrate one’s impending nuptials in the traditional way. Justin Bartha plays Doug, the main character except that he is actually the most minor. He’s the one about to get married, but we hardly see any of him.

What starts with a night of toasting on top of Caesar’s Palace turns into a morning after of waking up in a luxurious hotel suite that has been absolutely trashed. There is a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in a closet. Stu (Ed Helms) is missing a tooth and Doug is missing with only one day before the wedding. But nobody remembers what happened.

The movie starts in the middle before the story goes back to the beginning and then follows through to the conclusion. That’s structure for you. Change it up a bit and people will think that you are a genius filmmaker. The real genius part is that none of the other protagonists has any clue what happened on the gang’s first night in Las Vegas. Bachelors sure do have all of the fun. It’s just too bad that they don’t have any memory of it.

I can see why some people think that this is funny. The treasure hunt aspect always makes for a good time. But along the way these guys get into some fairly stupid and juvenile hi-jinks. They steal a police car. They steal Mike Tyson’s tiger. They steal $80,000. It’s all in good fun, right?

Maybe juvenile is too mature a word for what transpires in this hour and a half. As interesting as it seems, it’s really not that funny. The setups can be seen from a mile away and it also feels like a much longer movie than it really is. Phillips also directed Old School, the modern day Animal House, about six years ago. That was twice movie that this is.

I know that none of these words will have any effect on the target audience but it’s worth saying anyway. The Hangover is the vicarious version of the bachelor party a lot of men in the audience want to have. I only wish that if it comes true, that it stays in Vegas to keep the rest of us away from the carnage.

By the way, a sequel is already in the works. Apparently idiocy is more powerful than humour.