The Hangover

Director: Todd Phillips
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 2.0

Just fantastic: another advertisement for Las Vegas (as if they needed more advertising). Four guys decide to have a Bachelor's Party in The Meadows, but after a night of drunken stupidity, they lose the groom, inherit a baby and a tiger and have to play (idiot) detective to straighten their mess out and get back home in time. The first half hour is actually quite funny - there are a number of exceptional one-liners (most of them courtesy of Zach Galifianakis's weirdo character) - but then the humor gets spotty and desperate (the Police Station scenes, everything involving Heather Graham and Mike Tyson) before it fumbles to its safe conclusion about Keeping Priorities and Bros Before Hoes and whatever other miniscule points it was trying to make. Maybe it's just me, but this just doesn't capture the supreme weirdness (and vacuity) of the town: only Hunter S. Thompson seems to have gotten to the heart of the loathing that develops if you visit the place for more than a handful of days. Ed Helms is fantastic as the dentist with a missing tooth, but Bradley Cooper is a comedic void.