Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The Hangover Part III

Dustin: 1.5/5 stars Nick: 2.5/5 stars Average: 2 stars (Canary on life support)

Dustin: The Hangover Part III is the third and, hopefully as promised, final film in the “Wolf Pack” trilogy.

Nick: …and we all know people in Hollywood stick to their artistic vision.

Dustin: Do you think they started out to make a trilogy? Or just decided to make two more cynical cash grabs, er, I mean, sequels, after the first one turned out to be so popular?

Nick: I’m sure the idea was singular but when the movie becomes the third top grossing R- rated movie then the director will come out and say that the plan was always to make a trilogy.

Dustin: Given that Part II was the exact same movie as the first one, except not funny, I can’t imagine Part II being part of a story arc beginning with the original movie.

Nick: I think a better idea, if a sequel was inevitable, would be to tell a hangover of another group of friends. But that would have probably have been a lot more work to write and probably wouldn’t have as made as much money.

Dustin: Well, I like the dynamics of the “Wolf Pack.” I think they had the right idea in Part III to go with a different story line and tie together the first two films, but it just failed as both a comedy and a story. So let’s talk about Part III in particular. What did you think?

Nick: I’ll start out with putting it in a spectrum. The Hangover is great, The Hangover Part II is atrocious, and The Hangover Part III falls somewhere between. As you said it tries for a new idea, but the problem for me was that the comedy grew from a dark place, as it did in Part II.  Every joke is one of the characters being horrible to another, which is what I just couldn’t stand about the sequel.

Dustin: Or being horrible to an animal.

Nick: The first one was a comedy that grew from misunderstanding, and that tied into Alan’s obnoxiousness. Now Alan is just a prick and that’s where the comedy comes from. He’s no longer lovable.

Dustin: The last two are definitely more mean-spirited. Which makes me wonder if the filmmakers even knew what made the first film so good. Given that the other films by this these writers and director were steaming turds, I wonder if they didn’t somehow get lucky and accidentally write a good movie with the first part.

Nick: I’m going to disagree that all of Todd Phillips movies are bad, but recently I wouldn’t try to argue about it. Between the Hangovers his only other film is Project X, which takes on the same theme but with teenagers. Which is way more realistic.

Dustin: He did some good movies, like Old School. The other movies written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have been terrible too. They were responsible for 21 & Over, which was just depressing with a lot of jokes falling flat, much like The Hangover Part III. I don't think they actually wrote Part III, they were just credited for creating the characters, but their movie 21 & Over was so much like The Hangover Part II and III tonally that I have a hard time separating them from this.

Nick: I thought Part III could be pretty funny at times.

Dustin: I chuckled a few times, but not often enough for a movie sold as a comedy. Most of the laughs were already in the commercial. I’d say 90 percent of the other jokes fell flat. I could tell they were trying to be funny. But did the screenwriters really imagine people laughing when they had roosters getting shot or smothered, or dogs getting poisoned and having their necks broken?

Nick: Eh... I don’t know how to tell you this, but here it goes... I and the rest of the audience laughed pretty hard when the rooster was smothered but beyond that I’d agree. I was actually surprised when, as shown in the trailer, the giraffe was decapitated and the whole audience burst out laughing.

Dustin: Yeah. Did they just wander into this movie without seeing the trailer? How did they even know this movie existed? That was in all the commercials, so I was expecting at least one animal to die. Also, were we supposed to laugh when Alan’s mom is giving his dad CPR, and Alan is just sitting there with his headphones?

Nick: This whole movie stems from a very dark place. I guess we can compare this to Pain & Gain. I now feel that it was OK to laugh at Pain & Gain because the tone sets it up that way, this film is somehow way darker even though it’s not a true story about brutal murders.

Dustin: I think we established with that review that we can laugh at dark comedy. You’re right. This wasn’t set up as a dark comedy. The first scene is Chow breaking out of a Thai prison. The music is dramatic and the tone is dark. We can only assume this is supposed to be a comedy because the first movie was and because it ends with a wedding, which is how all comedies have traditionally ended since Shakespeare.

Nick: Instead of focusing on the “Wolf Pack” the film follows the connection between Alan and Chow, which is the reason why I feel that the darkness in Part III is more justifiable than Part II.  

Dustin: I’m not sure Part II even needed to exist. Chow is likeable in small amounts. I like that Ken Jeong plays against type and turns “positive” Asian stereotypes on their head. But way too much Chow in this movie. And it was a mistake making Alan less likable. The series falls apart as soon as we start disliking him.

It had a handful of laughs, and some of the action scenes were done well, like when they’re dangling from the roof of Caesar’s Palace. But it wasn’t a good movie. Would you recommend it?

Nick: In a comedy, every scene is supposed to set up a smile or laugh, whether light or dark, this film really does fail in this regard. I’m going to not recommend Part III unless you're seriously altered.

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