I do have to say one thing about Director Todd Phillips and his Team from this movie 'The Hangover III', and this would be at least this time around they tried to do something different. And while taking the franchise from raunchy comedy to profane Lethal Weapon territory didn't work, not even a little tiny bit, in retrospect I think I'd have appreciated it more if they just rolled with a remake of the first one, like they did in the last one.
Alan (Zack Galafianakis) is driving down some L.A. freeway with his newly purchased giraffe. Low freeway, giraffe gets decapitated, head causes fifty car pileup. I can't imagine how anybody thought that would be funny.
Alan's old man (Jeffrey Tambor) has had enough of Alan's bizarre ways and figures its nigh time to cut him off. But he dies of a heart attack. That's not funny either. Five minutes in we have a dead zoo animal, probably a few deaths on a freeway and a dead George Bluth. It's early, but I am concerned.
Because of Alan's increasingly erratic behavior, and the death of this old man who was the only one who had some control over him, it's time for the Wolfpack, which includes Phil (Bradley Cooper), Doug (Justin Bartha) and Stu (Ed Helms), along with other family members to stage an intervention and get Alan the help he needs. Somewhere in Arizona is a whackjob treatment facility, so its road trip time!
Unfortunately the road trip is interrupted by armed gunmen, led by Black Doug (Mike Epps) who you may remember sold Alan the roofies in the first movie, and his boss Marshall (John Goodman). It seems Chow (Ken Jeong) stole a bunch of gold from him,
and has somehow busted out that prison in Bangkok from the last movie, and while no one knows where he is, he has been Alan's pen pal so Marshall figures the Wolfpack can find him. If they don't, they're going kill White Doug. Again, Justin Bartha has been removed from the equation. Poor Justin Bartha.
Now from there, at least theoretically, thrills, chills, action, chaos and most importantly… humor… should follow, but rest assured… it does not. What we do get is an awful lot of mean spirited nonsense coupled with an about as much violence you will see in any movie calling itself an 'action comedy' that I can recall in recent memory.
Looking at the bigger picture that is 'The Hangover III', we are happy that this movie exists. Not because it's a good movie, no sir… it's just the opposite of that… but because I'm pretty sure everybody got paid well in this movie. So while Galafianakis and Helms no doubt were shortchanged after 'The Hangover', at least in relation to how much money it made, this time I'm sure they put a hurtin' on the producers. Justin Bartha too. Sure, he's barely a member of the Wolfpack since his character always gets removed from the equation, but he's gotta be there. Bradley Cooper on the other hand I'm sure got paid pretty well for the first movie, and while I'm sure he got paid well for this one too, dude looked like he enjoyed being in this movie just a little less than the audience members who were stuck watching it. Come on Bradley, it couldn't have been that awful an experience.
But while we're happy folks got paid and technicians, union members and craft services were all gainfully employed for a couple of months, the fact does remain that director Todd Phillips movie is not very good. I'm not even quite sure how to classify this movie. I know it's supposed to be a comedy but it was amazingly unfunny. I'm certainly no sage genius when it comes to comedy, but murdered animals, heart attack victims and folks getting shot in the back of the head is rarely funny stuff. And also, it seems to me that while a little Ken Jeong in a movie is almost always funny, his level of funny seems to decrease the longer my man is in said movie. Again, just a casual observation.
So since we have firmly established that 'The Hangover III' isn't really a comedy, I guess it's kind of a heist flick. But it's kind of a terrible heist flick as well, because the Wolfpack are awful at pulling off heists, but I'm guessing in theory that this should've been high comedy. It wasn't. Maybe if they were drunk, forgot that they pulled off the heist, then had to recreate their steps to remember where they put the money and White Doug, then we might have something to work with… but then who would go for that?
There's not really a whole lot more to say other than 'The Hangover III' was one of the more disappointing movies we've seen in some time. And we factored in heavy disappointment even before going in to see it.
