THE HANGOVER PART II

title: THE HANGOVER PART II
year: 2011
cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha
rating: **

Las Vegas is where our boys woke up with a hangover the first time. What happens in Vegas, stays there. You’ve heard all that – and at this point, you’ve probably seen it too. And now, here we go again: the new blind-spot odyssey taking place in Bangkok which, unlike Sin City, has little for most audiences to relate with. Nor our characters, who, after waking up hungover (constantly reminding each other: “It happened again”) wander around like bored tourists gathering clues for the disappearance of… not Doug this time. He’s back at a hotel for Phil, Stu and Alan to periodically call: a safety-net that didn’t occur in the original. And even though the self-claimed “Wolf Pack” is a lot further from home, the situation doesn’t seem as dire or hopeless this time around. Stu's getting married and his sixteen year old future brother-in-law is the missing-link the boys have to find... in time for the ceremony. It’s all very familiar, but the wry humor’s replaced with over-the-top gross-out situations: making us forget this is a comedy with characters who made us laugh the first time around; not only for their predicament, but their personalities. Bradley Cooper’s Phil is a bland, almost non-existent leader; Ed Helm’s Stu makes for a surprisingly passive victim of circumstances; and ringer Zach Galifianakis’s bearded-bizarro Alan is no scene-stealer. The only funny parts occur during the slide show at the end credits. So perhaps the already-discussed part three should provide us that stuff during the movie, and save the hangover till the end. Hell, it has to work better than this.