The Hangover is a curious relic from 2009. It can charitably be summed up as "a bunch of men approaching middle-age lose themselves in Vegas," but that doesn't erase the misogyny, the racism, and the lack of a grounded main character who is relatable. This movie launched the careers of Ed Helms, Zack Galifianakis, and Bradly Cooper, yet none of them have a particularly good showing here, besides Galifianakis. Helms plays a pushover dentist that acts exactly like Andy from The Office; Cooper is in smarmy douchbag mode as a teacher who advises his friend not to get married because "your life is over." Cooper's character is the worst; on morning of the eponymous hangover, the trio find a baby in their suite that Cooper wants to leave unattended. He bullies Helms' "Dr. Faggot" (yeah, 2009) into using his credit card to pay for a forty-five thousand dollar a night villa, and he never gets his comeuppance or learns a goddamn thing. If you have a comedy populated by detestable folks, they have suffer for their evil or become better people, otherwise the morality of the whole enterprise is called into question. And that's really it; The Hangover is a movie with a rotten core. Even Galifianakis' man-child is a convicted sex offender; that's a "joke" that I missed the first time I saw the thing. Watching The Hangover in 2023, you'll be shocked at how unfunny it is. There aren't really any jokes; it's all shock-value bits, like Mike Tyson cold cocking Galifianakis, or Ken Jeong jumping out of a truck naked and swinging. To understand how this movie made 600 million dollars, you have to take a trip back in time.
By the end of the aughts, douchebag masculinity was still running wild, baby. Gross-out comedies like American Pie had ruled the decade, and while the WWE was retreating from the edgy soap opera of the attitude era, everyone still remembered it. There would be a reckoning shortly, and the double-edge behemoth of the MCU and a touchier movie-going audience (when was the last time we had a hit comedy in theaters?) killed off the mid-budget flick. The Hangover seemed like something real. Its surprises were genuinely surprising, and an audience calloused to casual misogyny (all the women in this film are either strippers or shrews) and despicable characters (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia aired in 2005) ran to theaters in droves to see The Hangover. I recall thinking it was funny as hell back in 2009. While a lot of the comedies from that era have problems, the filmography of Judd Apatow holds up much better because most of his movies have a heart, whereas The Hangover has nothing but a pair of shrugging shoulders that seem to exclaim "boys will be boys." The incredibly vile sequel proved my point (Helms' Stu gets a facial tattoo and has unconsensual sex with a Thai lady-boy and it's played for laughs) and I'm not sure anyone saw the third flick. Over a decade later, The Hangover is forgotten; Cooper is a movie star, and Galifianakis' and Helms' careers have petered out. If you're planning on rewatching it, don't; put in Superbad or The Forty Year-Old Virgin. If you've never seen it, watch something else.
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