The Hangover Part III. Rated MA 15+ (strong coarse language, nudity and crude humour). 100 minutes. Directed by Todd Phillips. Screenplay by Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin.
Verdict: The Hangover
series limps over the finish line.
It often pays not to have
high expectations for the cinematic delights a film promises to deliver. ‘The
buzz’, such as it was, for this third and final instalment of Phillips’
Hangover trilogy, was keen anticipation for how the creators would farewell the
characters we had come to know, love and instantly recognise within ourselves
and people we know. Sadly, this vacant, somnambulic offering is not so much a
finale, than it is a slowly deflating balloon that only ends up making you
question how they got it so right the first (and arguably the second) time
around.
When Alan (Zach
Galifianakis) agrees to go into rehab, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms)
and Doug (Justin Bartha) agree to drive him there. Travelling across country,
they are run off the road by a gang of pig-mask-wearing thugs who are working
for a gangster called Marshall (John Goodman). Marshall, who has had his gold
bullion stolen by the irascible Mr Chow (Ken Jeong), takes Doug hostage until
the guys can find Chow and the gold and bring them to him.
This flimsy premise simply
doesn’t stand up to too much interrogation, and much of the time is spent
waiting for Phillips and Co to go for broke. Jeong, who has always been the
touchstone for the series’ appallingly bad taste, is catapulted into leading
man territory here, and it just doesn’t work. Neither does the dramatic tenor
of Phillips and Mazin’s pedestrian screenplay, which even with the presence of
the brilliant but wasted Goodman, appears to have absolutely nothing further to
add to the exploits of the first two films.
It is easy to imagine why
the film-makers thought it might be an interesting idea to depart from the
hugely-successful formula of the first two films. What they have replaced it
with, however, is a kind of inert, soap-operatic dramedy that, with the
exception of a fine funeral sequence early on, falls flat and never recovers.
The final conceit is a post-credits scene that is the film we wish they’d made
– and why they didn’t will forever have to remain an unforgivable mystery.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
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