THE HANGOVER PART III
DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
CAST: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong
CLASSIFICATION: LN
RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes
RATING: **
DON’T expect the adventurous and pervading madness of The Wolfgang to surface in The Hangover Part III. If anything, it is a sobering disappointment of what it has now become – a potent mix of puerile, banal humour.
Talk about flogging a dead horse – or giraffe, in this case!
But for the benefit of fans, I will delve into the hackneyed plot with Alan (Galifianakis) the focus this time. Soon after his road kill fiasco – he bought a giraffe that was decapitated by a bridge on the highway – his dad dies.
His strange behaviour has his friends worried, so they stage an intervention and decide that a trip to a rehab clinic is just what he needs. Of course, Phil (Cooper), Stu (Helms) and Doug (Bartha) agree to take him.
True to form, the plan is thrown off kilter when their sinful past with Leslie Chow (Jeong) catches up with them. Having stolen millions in gold bars from mobster Marshall (John Goodman), The Wolfgang are the only ones who can find the slippery, foul-mouthed, animal-hating criminal mastermind Chow.
But just to ensure they do his bidding, Marshall keeps Doug hostage.
And so Phil, Stu and Alan find themselves thrust into a mad cat-and-mouse chase with Chow, who, funnily enough, screws them over again by, unwittingly, getting them to rob the mobster.
Argh, and so it is one dreadful misfire after another as The Wolfgang find themselves arrested, travelling from Mexico to Las Vegas, where it all began.
The OTT performance by Alan, his snide potshots at Stu and his obvious “bromance” affections for Phil are riotously funny.
Then there is his friendship with an out-of-control, cocaine-snorting and sexually charged Chow, who would blow a tree if he could.
As for Bartha, well he is MIA for most of the movie. But what’s new?
And Cooper, with Helms, just kind of goes through the motions; sadly in a state of sobriety.
Even Melissa McCarthy’s lollipop-sucking shenanigans doesn’t do much for the entertainment value.
The best part of the movie is the bloopers at the end after The Wolfgang have struck a new pact. I think I can live with that instead of suffering another anorexic comedic effort from Phillips. Cheers to that and the end of this blundering and idiotic farce of a buddy movie!
If you enjoyed The Hangover (parts 1 and 2) or the Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle franchise, you will love this.