I could call this the funniest movie yet in the nu-comedy renaissance. I could call this a near perfect balance of wit and puerility; insight and characterisation; surreality and farce. I could call Zach Galifianakis the funniest man since the last time someone called an actor really funny. Naming no names: Danny McCoughBride or Will HicFerrellcup.
I could say a lot of really obvious, gushing things about a movie that produced the first genuine ripple of applause I have ever heard in a UK cinema, but instead I’ll come up with a completely batshit insane theory about this film: it’s a frat fairy tale.
See, director Todd Phillips likes to indulge the little kid that didn’t just die as a horrible mansuit grew up around it. He knows it’s still there, somewhere deep inside of us all, taking a break from statistical reports to giggle away at dick and poo jokes. It generated that cheery, nostalgic glow in the pit of our stomachs as we watched a bunch of manchildren feigning college status in ‘Old School’.
The thing with this kid is it doesn’t want namby-pamby fantasies involving obese purple dinosaurs or the Tweenies. It’s far too clever for that. It’s far too used to the strains of life as an adult: the booze, the women, the heartache. But it still wants a little magic to go with it.
So take out the yellow brick road and give us a desert. Take out Oz with all its emerald brilliance and give us a time-lapsed Vegas, stripped of all its glamour. And forget the usual take on the Tin Man, the Lion, the Scarecrow and Dorothy. Give it a twist and leave us a bunch of derelict souls searching for their all-American friend.
Stay with me here because whatever your thoughts on comedy, it’s always nice to be able to have your ribs split while enjoying some smarts on the side. And this film does both very well. Instead of the party build-up, it’s the shared shame of the comedown. As a bunch of friends take their soon to be wedded pal off to Vegas for a Batchelor Party he’ll never forget.
The moment they wake up to the door click of a stripper’s departure, carpet-tongued, bleary-eyed and with a tiger, a chicken and a baby in the closet, you realise this isn’t Kansas anymore. No clean-cut hero for this movie. He’s got lost and it’s up to our intrepid band of fuck-ups to go find him. And maybe pick up a heart, some courage and a few lost brains while they’re at it.
So off they go along a breadcrumb trail of mystery; tracing their way back through the Las Vegas forest discovering that stripper, a wisecracking doctor, a wedding chapel, a rufie-confusing drug dealer and a camp Asian gangster with a funny voice and a curious obsession with fat people (his ‘fat Jesus’ line is a classic). Speaking of comedy voices, they even bump into the living cartoon Mike Tyson. It might be high farce, but his big, bad ogre hilariously lisping along to Phil Collins works within the framework of this fantasy. And just because it’s the same track we heard in a chocolate ad, doesn’t make this film confectionery.
There’s little of the weak sentimentality that often wraps up a story going nowhere. And while a scene involving Heather Graham valiantly injecting some of her chirpy Roller Girl character into a stock role is a little lazy, it doesn’t hamper the propulsive plot. It barely lets up right through to the madcap race to make the wedding on time.
Each of the characters is a flip of what you’d expect. Any sympathies hard won. The film proving once again that comedy is the chance for the loser, the anti-hero, the also-ran to shine. Bradley Cooper tempers the smarm that made him such a hateable character in ‘The Wedding Crashers’. His Phil a school teacher who’s belittling, brash attitude suggests infidelity, but in truth he’s a loving husband and father. It’s down to Ed Helm’s Stu to take up the mantle of ladykiller, initially channelling a gawky Alan Partridge before growing a serious set of balls.
Hype can sink lesser films and lesser performances, but with Zach Galifianakis it’s well-deserved. His Alan is the film’s idiot savant. A baked tabby with matted beard, man purse and Wildean wordplay skilful enough to make ‘re-tard’ into a thing of idiotic beauty. Anyone who delivers a masturbating baby skit and gets hilarity, not horror, deserves respect.
In fact, so good is his performance that it’s his beaming, beatific face that you’ll struggle to shake as you leave the theater. A face that personifies the big kid mentality at the heart of this very adult, very witty movie. You can try not to gush, but with a film of this quality it’s almost impossible not to.
The Hangover: 4/5
