At first, The Hangover looks like another of those US films involving four guys, a bachelor party & Las Vegas...all the ingredients of an often-unfunny film involving adolescent humour acted out by middle aged men. However, whilst The Hangover does have the adolescent humour, it is actually genuinely funny and the toilet humour is reserved for one character in particular, Alan Garner (ably performed by Zach Galifiniakis). The story is fairly basic: four friends go to Vegas for a bachelor party, end up getting absolutely trashed and wake up unable to remember the previous night - with one member of the party down. Predictably, the missing friend is the groom and the rest of the film revolves around the others - and a baby! - re-tracing their footsteps from the night before.

During their efforts, there are a number of very funny encounters with a very camp Chinese gangster (Ken Jeong), often resulting in Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan being injured in some way. Pain is a usual occurrence in these kind of films, but the involvement of Mr Chow makes these incidents all the funnier. There is an initial feeling of “oh, here we go...” when Mike Tyson appears in a cameo, but again this is well put together and 'Iron Mike', whilst mumbling most of his lines, does emerge from the film rather well. Heather Graham appears to be included purely as a 'name' amongst the relative unknowns but she, too, puts in a good, if unremarkable, performance as the 'love-interest' stripper.

Typically, the film does have a happy ending, which you expect from this genre and the ending of this film is nothing out of the ordinary - but it does have an amusing bonus sequence during the credits.

2XS rating: 7/10

John Stanley

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