Hangover Part III

In the world of modern day Hollywood where unnecessary trilogies, prequels, and re-imaginations of older successful films exist; I shouldn’t have been too surprised by the release of The Hangover Part III. I guess I just figured that since this was clearly a “we’re being lazy, please give us money” effort, that they'd at least do something cool like force famous one liners from other franchises that have been around for too long. But since the producers were weak and didn’t demand this, I will be forcing these one liners in my review!

This movie starts off with Alan (Galifianakis) drinking and driving down the highway with a giraffe that he just purchased. And just like you see in the previews, this has disastrous results which not only ends with his dad having a fatal heart attack but the gang getting back together to force an intervention with Alan to hopefully get him back on his meds. So as they are driving him to a treatment facility in Arizona they are ambushed by black Doug and his boss Marshall (John Goodman). In some ridiculous attempt at a plot, he tells this rather lengthy story of how Mr Chow(Ken Jeong) has entered his life through the mess ups of The Wolfpack and somehow was able to steal $21 million dollars of gold from him that he stole from a sheik himself. Well now that Chow has escaped prison, he assumes that he will try and contact Alan since they remained pen pals while Chow was locked up. So he keeps white Doug as insurance and threatens to kill him if they don’t find Chow and his money in 96 hours. I’m too old for this for this shit!

While chasing down Chow and eventually getting tricked by him, Todd Phillips (who directed the first two) takes you and the gang to Tijuana and ultimately back to Vegas, which is some sort of attempt to bring closure to the trilogy. Along the way you are exposed to more of Alan and his “I’m a big baby” humor which was getting a bit old by the end of the second one and surely was annoying the entire time of Due Date in which Galifianakis essentially played the same character. Don’t get me wrong, Alan along with Chow, remain the only funny people in this movie. But the sad thing is, there really aren’t that many good moments in it. Phillips has always brought dark humor to his movies but killing animals in cruel and gruesome ways just wasn’t that funny. What made the first one special was the fact that it was something that everyone could relate to; partying way too hard on vacation in the world’s playground and not remembering a thing about the night before while trying to retrace your steps. There is none of that in this one, it’s just random scene after random scene that spends the entire time setting up a bad joke. You got knocked the fuck out man!

There were however a few highlights in the movie. The scenes involving Alan and the baby from the first one were really cool.  And the party that Chow throws in his suite in Vegas is one that we all would love to lay claim too. Yippee Kayea Mr Falcon! Honestly, the scene at the end of the credits was the best part of the movie and made you wish that it was actually the start of the movie.

In the end, this is one of those movies where the only really funny jokes are already shown in the previews leaving you with just a few chuckles for the remaining 90 minutes of this attempt at comedy. I rate this movie as really WEAK and suggest you wait for Redbox.