The Hangover (2009)
Director: Todd Phillips
Had I seen this before: Yes
Did I recognize the “famous quote” in the ad: Not really, although I pretty quickly figured out the actor was doing Galifianakis and guessed from there
I want to start out by saying something nice about the 2009 film The Hangover: it’s only 100 minutes long. (This compliment is less backhanded than it sounds—I also like it when good movies are short!) And, it should be said, it showcases a nude Ken Jeong absolutely flying out of the trunk of a car in a moment that is still very surprising and funny. Actually? Quite a lot of the moments are funny. Unlike several other iffily-aged comedies that I have covered, however, this one is not saved overall by my lingering childhood/teenhood affection for it, as I was 29 years old and 8 months pregnant when it was released and not really in a being-charmed-by-idiot-men place in my life. Turns out, having achieved middle age, I am now in more of a please-leave-the-idiot-men-in-jail-at-the-midpoint-of-the-movie headspace. And I am not generally a supporter of the carceral system, but we simply cannot have these men loose in the streets. As director Todd Phillips would later discover, we live in a society. For what it’s worth, I doubt this stance would surprise the movie itself, because it occupies a world in which most women are sorted into the “horrible scold who refuses to let men have a good time” category. (Me!) (There is only one other category available for women and that is “fun-loving but possibly deranged sex worker.”)
Or maybe I’m just grumpy because a movie that came out when I was nearly thirty is full of flip phones and Mapquest references and a “boys will be boys” ethos that feels a thousand years old and it’s one thing for movies from my high school years to feel dated but now my full adulthood also happened a very long time ago, somehow. Distressing stuff! But it’s instructive as well, in terms of Regal Ad Man and his dizzyingly narrow range of movie references, because 2009 is the most recent film on the list. I’m now confident in saying that he is no older than 45, mostly because I don’t want to dwell on the idea of people who were well into their 30s or older when The Hangover came out still using it as a reference point. The world is depressing enough.
And here I am in paragraph three about to say yet another nice thing about The Hangover: this movie has a truly excellent comedy premise. A group of people wake up from a debaucherous night on the town with no memory of what happened and a hotel room full of baffling clues. That’s a funny setup! In this case, it is a bachelor party gone awry, in the sense that there is a mystery infant and a tiger in the hotel room but the groom is missing. So is the mattress from his room. So is one of the groomsmen’s teeth. So, they soon find out, is the fancy car borrowed from the bride’s father, replaced by a stolen police cruiser. This presents a very amusing web for our heroes (?) to untangle. The whole machine is well constructed—each lead results in more hijinks, escalating to a car crash and a hostage situation and some very risky animal transport. And each new crisis is 100% their own doing.
Speaking of our heroes (?), I’m about to prove to you conclusively that I do not outline these posts in any way before I begin typing them because this paragraph is also going to be something complimentary about a movie that I seem to be accidentally giving a positive review to despite being mildly irritated the entire time I was watching it. Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis are all very talented performers who are elevating the material in a way that I think was absolutely crucial to the movie’s success. Bradley Cooper is so good at playing a smarmy asshole sociopath here that I’m worried I will now go into the film Maestro low-key mad at Leonard Bernstein, despite many intervening years of B. Coop goodwill having built up before this rewatch. He’s that good! Ed Helms nails the surface-level amiable pushover geek who has a secret dark and wild side—a description that sounds amusing but in practice came across as a little too real, in a world where angry nerds have curdled into something world-destroyingly sinister. And Zach Galifianakis makes Alan the most compelling character in most scenes, which is no small feat considering the nonstop circus that is every set piece.
So I think that’s my experience with The Hangover in a nutshell—it sounds absolutely solid and funny when I describe it, but the actual experience of watching it is so weighed down by gay slurs and arguments over how to pronounce the word “retard” and over-the-top horror at seeing the body of an elderly person or the breast of a nursing mother and bafflingly hateful women and general “edginess” that it ends up being exhausting on the whole. A sort of good time that leaves one with a sickly malaise, if you will.
The Regal Ad
The outfit:
This guy is moments away from being my least favorite guy in the entire ad but for this specific line, I think he’s more or less on point: the satchel looks right, he’s wearing a wolf shirt to represent the “Wolfpack,” and he channels the snippy indignity of Zach Galifianakis pretty well. A
The line: I’m not sure this is an especially well-known line from this movie? I also think the second half of the line— “Indiana Jones has one” —really completes the joke, so this is just sort of…half a joke. C+
The context: In the movie, Alan is responding defensively to being bullied about his “man purse.” This gentleman is preemptively defensive, before anyone has said anything. This is just his conversation opener. AND he forgot the Indiana Jones bit. C+
Bacon, Egg, and Avocado Sandwich inspired by the Cafe Americano at Caeser’s Palace, Las Vegas; featuring Cajun Remoulade, NOLA-style French Bread Rolls, and Easy Skillet Breakfast Potatoes
They don’t spend a lot of time eating food in this film but there is a scene that implies they have just finished having breakfast poolside at Caeser’s Palace. I consulted the Caeser’s Palace menu that seemed most breakfast-y and picked out what I personally would order to soak up a boozy night if that weren’t a thing I quit having almost ten years ago (boozy nights, not indulgent breakfasts). Actually, if I’m being totally honest, my semi-enjoyment of the film was probably enhanced by the slight schadenfreude of one who has woken up clear-headed for almost a decade. And my enjoyment of this breakfast sandwich was probably also enhanced by the slight schadenfreude of knowing that there are people in Las Vegas paying $26 for it as we speak.
Up next: “You can’t sit with us”