The Hangover Part II moves the wolfpack from Las Vegas to Bangkok, and barely changes a thing. Todd Phillips returns as director, co-writing with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis are back as Phil, Stu and Alan. The tagline promises “The wolfpack is back.” That is the problem.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Stu’s Safe Brunch
Two years after the Vegas disaster, Stu Price is marrying Lauren and taking no chances. He bans his friends from throwing him a bachelor party and holds a subdued pre-wedding brunch at IHOP instead. Tracy talks Doug into bringing her brother Alan along. At the airport, Lauren’s 16-year-old brother Teddy joins the trip. Alan disapproves.
The film then does what the first film did. Phil, Stu and Alan wake in a rundown Bangkok hotel room with no memory of the night before. Stu has a face tattoo. Alan’s head is shaved. A capuchin monkey shares the room. Teddy is missing, and all they find of him is a severed finger.
Chow, the Monk and the Ice Box
Ken Jeong’s Leslie Chow followed them to Thailand on Alan’s invite. He starts recounting the lost night, then passes out after snorting cocaine. The trio think he is dead and hide the body in the hotel’s ice box.
A tip from Doug sends them to a police station to collect Teddy. They are handed a wheelchair holding an elderly Buddhist monk instead. He has taken a vow of silence and can tell them nothing.
A business card leads them to the smoldering ruins of a business, apparently wrecked in a riot the night before. A nearby parlor confirms Stu got his tattoo there, and that the group started a fight.
The beats land in this order:
- The hotel room and the missing Teddy.
- Chow’s return and the ice box.
- The monk at the police station.
- The burned business and the tattoo parlor.
Paul Giamatti and Mason Lee
Paul Giamatti joins as Kingsley, an undercover Interpol agent. Mason Lee plays Teddy, and the film is his Hollywood debut. He is the son of director Ang Lee. Jeffrey Tambor returns as Sid Garner, Jamie Chung plays Lauren, and Justin Bartha’s Doug sits much of this out at the resort.
Crystal the Monkey plays the drug-dealing monkey. Mike Tyson reprises himself and sings a cover of the 1984 Murray Head song “One Night in Bangkok.” Nick Cassavetes cameos as a Bangkok tattoo artist, a role originally envisioned for Mel Gibson and first cast with Liam Neeson.
A Sequel That Repeats Itself
The Hangover Part II is a copy of a film that worked once. The structure is identical, the mystery is identical, and the shock of the first film is gone. What remains is a bigger budget, a longer flight and a severed finger.
The cast is not the failure. Galifianakis still finds the odd, needy center of Alan, and Jeong plays Chow with an energy the rest of the film lacks. Helms carries Stu’s panic well. But the script, credited to Phillips, Mazin and Armstrong, gives them the same jokes in a new time zone.
The Hangover Part II premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre on May 19, 2011, and opened theatrically on May 26. It became the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2011 and the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of its theatrical run. It also received mixed reviews, and the numbers do not settle the argument. A third installment, The Hangover Part III, followed in May 2013.
The box office says audiences wanted more. The film says nobody had a new idea for what more should be. A sequel can repeat a formula, but it cannot repeat a surprise, and The Hangover Part II never tries.
4.4 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
