THE HANGOVER 2- Review

'Four friends go and have a bachelor party ahead of (Name)'s wedding, and wind up having a wild drunken night in (Location). When they wake up the next morning, they have the mother of all hangovers, and find some gangsters are after them, looking for their (Noun). Worse still, they've managed to misplace (Name) and have to find him before the wedding. Oh, and there's a (Animal) in the bathroom.'

The Hangover Part II is, in every respect, mad-lib filmmaking. The structure of this sequel is practically identical to the original film, but this time it's mild-mannered dentist Stu, getting married in Thailand. He reluctantly invites along his best friend Phil and giant man-child Alan, and lives to regret it when they all wake up in Bangkok. Stu's future brother-in-law is missing, and apparently, "Bangkok has him now."

Part of what made The Hangover so enjoyable, for me at least, was how unexpected it was. Some fans are already saying this sequel is better, if the midnight screening crowd at Cineworld in Middlesbrough is anything to go by, and I fully anticipate that those people will say that it's unfair to compare to the original. Worse sequels have had this defence applied, but the similarities are so intrinsic here that it's impossible not to compare.

If this film itself were a hangover, you couldn't have had too much to drink, because prior events in these characters' lives are all too sharp in the viewers' memories. Of course you have to compare this to the original! Expecting otherwise is like expecting someone to like your dog better than any of the other dogs they've ever encountered. If it wags and chases its tail, barks, and has a wet nose, it's still a blimmin' dog. The Hangover Part II is pretty much of the exact same breed as its predecessor, but it's considerably more aggressive.

Director Todd Phillips has been promising that shit gets real when the Wolfpack reaches Bangkok, and that the sequel is wilder, darker and meaner than the original. The middle word there is a particular favourite as abstract concepts go. In all of the things that this one goes further with than The Hangover, it's not really funnier. As mentioned, I enjoyed that film because it was unexpected, but the whole rehash of the original is what lets the comedy down in this one.

The Hangover, in addition to all of its enjoyable performances and quotable dialogue and surreal twists, was a detective story. Our detectives, ably played by Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms, were all hapless and recovering from the biggest night out of their lives, but watching them pull together to solve the mystery worked so well for me because I didn't know where it would go next. Cooper, Galifianakis and Helms are all equally as good here, but in this instalment, I could easily guess where the plot was going.

If your viewing experience is anything like mine, you'll realise this in one of the film's more inventive moments, in which we see a flashback of events up to that point in the film, as re-enacted by young children. It's different, and surreal, and well-executed, but it didn't make me laugh. Some of the best gags are frittered away in the marketing too, like Alan's baldness and Stu's tattoo and the return of Ken Jeong as flamboyant gangster Chow. But the boldness of the film is almost all bravado and no real innovation.

Without the ability to surprise, the film goes in for shock tactics instead. It's harsher, alright, to the point where some will actually be offended. There was no danger of that in Vegas, which is somehow exponentially safer than Bangkok. Also, I know for a fact that a second act twist is lifted wholesale from an early draft of the first film, meaning that the sequel actually mined stuff that wasn't good enough to make it into the original. It's not all bad news though- one of the welcome reprisals of the first film comes in the closing credits montage, and that's easily the funniest part in each film.

The Hangover Part II is remarkably zippy, for a film in which all of the path laid ahead will be predictable to anybody who has seen the first film. I think that comes down to the fact that the performers are still on top form, their camaraderie preserved best of all, alongside just about everything else from two years ago. If Phillips and these guys want to make Part III, more power to them, and I'll see it. But I'd really, sincerely hope that they bring something different along next time. It's More Of The Same, capital M, O, T and S, but if you still really love the first one, I doubt you'll object too strongly to revisiting the Wolfpack.

The Hangover Part II is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Hangover Part II, why not share your comments below? I'm taking a week off next week, but I'll return on June 6th with my review of X-Men: First Class.

 I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

CEDAR RAPIDS- Review

Cedar Rapids is set in 2009, which perhaps indicates that the film has been bounced around in release schedules, or simply held back for a little while, until its recent release. Its limited release in the UK comes accompanied in multiplexes by an unwholesome trailer reel of the summer's upcoming bawdy comedies, most of which look a tiny bit shit. On the other hand, this one ain't so bad.

As the story goes, Tim Lippe is an altruistic insurance salesman who gets booted up to the big time when his company's golden boy passes away in an unfortunate auto-erotic accident. Anyhoo, he's dispatched by his boss to the industry's annual conference and back-slapping jamboree in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He's taken under the wings of three veterans as he's pressured to win the industry gold standard, the prestigious Two Diamonds award.

Not to get stuck on that trailer reel, but it contained a preview for The Hangover Part II, in which leading man Ed Helms reprises his role and (probably) the entire script from the first film in a different location. If Cedar Rapids did take time to get to the screen, its progress was indubitably eased by his success in The Hangover, and so the film has a tenuous link with Zach Galifianakis' recent dramedy, It's Kind of a Funny Story, strengthened by the fact that I found this film just as incidental as the other.

The most interesting thing about the film is its oppositional portrayal of insurance salesmen. You saw Saw VI, right? They're evil, evil people, and in movies, they're painted that way in such broad strokes that it's become a very easy shorthand. In Cedar Rapids, Ed Helms' Tim is far more gentle and altruistic- if you didn't laugh when I said it the first time, then good for you. It could do more to rehabilitate an easy character stereotype, except its strokes in the opposite direction are just as broad and simplistic as the more dominant representation.

For instance, Tim is pretty much mothered by Macy, the woman who taught him in 7th grade, played by Sigourney Weaver. She's also his fuck buddy, which isn't so much an Oedipal thing as the prolonged realisation of his adolescent fantasising. Later, his small-town outlook is reminiscent of James Stewart in... well, a lot of James Stewart movies. He doesn't drink or swear until he gets to the conference. He's such a child-like character- not like Russell Brand's man-child version of Arthur but genuinely regressive- that it ultimately does nothing to swing the pendulum back the other way.

Tim is transparently a character, and although you hopefully like him, it's impossible to connect his humanity with an alternative to the sharky portrayals of insurance men elsewhere in this very film. John C. Reilly has his fingers in many pies here, working on this indie-cred comedy while playing a similar character as in his collaborations with Will Ferrell. As the boorish Dean Ziegler, he's effectively there to deliver the funnies while Helms is the straight man. As with many of Reilly's performances, he's deeper than he appears, but the plot threads of the character's divorce and alcoholism are broached and then forgotten.

Locally, Cedar Rapids is showing just once an evening, until the programme changes on Friday. The screening I attended was reasonably full, and the laughs came haltingly, usually when Reilly's character was saying or doing something the trailers had promised. Certainly, he gets the lion's share of the stuff you see in the trailers- the one-liners and the sex jokes that really aren't what this one is about. At its core, the film is a comedy that wears its indie-cred and its lofty ardour for its characters with pride. But while it's sweet natured and enjoyable, the jokes are a little sparse. All the same, it's better than Something Borrowed looks. Yeesh.

Cedar Rapids is now playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Cedar Rapids, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.