‘The Hangover Part II’ fails to live up to the hype
The Hangover Part II
(Cert 15, 97 mins, Comedy/Action/Romance)
Dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms) has fallen madly in love with Lauren (Jamie Chung) and they plan to marry in a traditional ceremony in Thailand.
Best friends Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper), Doug Billings (Justin Bartha) and Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis) are invited and they take the long-haul flight with Lauren’s 16-year-old brother Teddy (Mason Lee), who is destined for a career in medicine.
After a late night, Phil, Stu and Alan wake in a sleazy Bangkok hotel room, with pounding headaches and no recollection of the night before.
“It’s happened again,” moans Stu as the trio scours the city for Teddy, crossing paths with shady businessman Kingsley (Paul Giamatti), flamboyant criminal Mr Chow (Ken Jeong) and a larcenous monkey. The Hangover Part II is a tasteless, preposterous and ultimately pointless tale of East meets West, which careens from one improbable set piece to the next, including the concealment of a dead body and a high-speed car chase.
The sequel rests lazily on its mouldering laurels, engineering familiar scenarios to inflict the maximum physical and emotional distress on the two-dimensional characters.
Cooper’s natural charm wilts in the heat, while poor Helms is the butt of most of the jokes, literally so for a sequence at a dancing club where the screenwriters become sniggering schoolboys.
Galifianakis is obnoxious from his opening scene and we struggle to comprehend his presence at the wedding.
The groom-to-be’s showdown with his sneering father-in-law, who understandably doesn’t want Stu polluting the gene pool, falls flat like the rest of the film.
Rating: 2/5.
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