The Hangover (2009, Phillips)

"We're a wolf pack of four, wandering the desert, searching for strippers and cocaine." -Alan Garner, The Hangover (2009)

The Hangover is about what you'd expect from Todd Phillips, and is very much in the vein of Old School. Take a trio of up-and-coming actors, two of them fairly funny comic actors still perfecting their comic voices, throw them in an outrageous, high-concept fratboy picture that still has a heart beating somewhere inside, and set to frappe. Not all of the jokes hit, and when looked at squarely and incisively, there's not much substance supporting the fluff.

At the same time, Helms and Galifianakis in particular work the hell out of the material they're given, and Cooper's charisma is tangible to the point that there's no doubt he's a superstar on the rise. In fact, when looked at objectively, I'm at a loss to explain why Cooper would accept the role of Phil Wenneck simply because there's so very little for him to work with. Yet his screen presence is memorable enough that his role feels much more substantial than it really is. And his presence, along with Justin Bartha's, provides a needed counterpoint for Galifianakis, operating at full-tilt absurd. Somewhere navigating middle ground is Helms, who in my opinion steals the show and cleanly walks the tightrope between some of the more absurdist comedy while making his character both believably nebbish and sympathetic in a fully-realized way, no small feat in a film like this. If Helms is surrounding himself with the right people, he'll be able to greenlight his The 40 Year Old Virgin in the wake of The Hangover's success.

Perhaps wisely, The Hangover doesn't try to clean up its leads too much in the film's third act, apologize for them, or arrange a tidy ending that ties every character thread or puts everything neatly in its place. The film lives or dies by its jokes, and when viewed without too many demands, it pleases more often than not. It's not the kind of tightly calculated comedy destined to become a comedy classic, it simply succeeds based on the good-natured chemistry of its male leads. Likewise Phillips has been around the block enough to know that his greatest talent, after assembling his winning cast, is simply to set the scenes and then get out of the way and allow the magic to happen whenever possible.

If you do decide to see The Hangover, stay through the closing credit sequence; it keeps pace with the best moments of the rest of the film and delivers many a chuckle. All in all, not necessarily the most glowing of reviews, but The Hangover seems to be proving a sleeper hit this summer, delivering more than its share of anticipated entertainment. It certainly helps that there's no associated franchise baggage, no weighted or lofty expectations, and that the film has been allowed to operate without castrating it for family viewing. And as relatively mindless, R-rated summer fun, it's operating uncontested at the moment with several more weeks until the arrival of probable home runs Bruno and Funny People.

7/10