Hanging In

The critics' reviews on the new movie The Hangover, while mostly positive, seem to be sharply divided. Most are either hailing it as the funniest movie yet this year, while others are declaring its director, Todd Phillips, the "Uwe Boll of comedy." Uncertainty about which group I'd fall in kept me from going last weekend. (Well, that, and a much stronger desire to see Up.) But this weekend, I decided to take a chance.

It turns out, there's a middle ground here. There are some laughs to be had here, but none of the side-splitting, can't breathe variety. The movie takes entirely too long to get rolling, with a full third of the run time gone before the real plot arrives: waking up in a Vegas hotel room, in a mess of weird circumstances, and no memory of what happened the night before.

This kind of movie has been made many times before. It reminded me most of Dude, Where's My Car? -- but without the absolute lunacy that made that movie way more entertaining than it had any right to be. The Hangover, by contrast, does mostly keep a smile on your face once it finally gets going, with only the occasional good belly laugh.

The three leads are decent. Bradley Cooper doesn't really have the right look to pull off the "screw up" character, but his acting is shameless and un-self-conscious enough to mostly bridge the gap. Zach Galifianakis makes an amusing schlub, but he does start to wear thin before the movie ends. Ed Helms is probably the best of the three. He plays a far less dim-witted character than he does on The Office (or did in his Daily Show correspondent persona), and is convincing -- yet also really isn't as funny as he is from week to week on that series.

What I was probably going to rate as a slightly above average movie did get a big shot in the arm right at the end credits. A series of photos is shown, covering the adventures the group had during their "missing time," fleshing out details more starkly than they manage to actually uncover during the film. And here's where the comic gold really is. It's a shame it took so long to get there, but at least it got there.

So overall, I rate The Hangover a B-. It's probably not one to rush out to the theater to see, but may be worth a later look on DVD.