cinemajesty Movie Review: "The Hangover Part II" (2011)After the summer smash hit "The Hangover" (2009) about four friends in their early 30s out to enjoy a bachelor party night in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA and losing the groom in the act, gets an even further accelerated sequel, in losing the bride's brother this time, directed by Todd Phillipps, who takes the audience-agreeable cast with Bradley Cooper as the character of Phil, the pushing organizer, getting his longtime school friends Stu and Alan, performed by actors Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, to a trip to Bangkok, Thailand, where they have another night of reckoning, further triggered by the reprising character of Mr. Chow, portrayed by actor/entertainer Ken Joeng, who saves the picture of being half-baked, concluding into an exotic comedy full of perverted action and fast-forward script-doctored story-line translated into a surprisingly twisting editorial executed by Debra Neil-Fisher and Michael L. Sale. Director Todd Phillips keeps all the strings to improve flat-out locations from Part I and lets the image system merge with Bangok's gritty, at times repulsive nature, to confront the audience with a party of a life-time, which shall lead to another marriage of no furthers.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

tomgillespie2002 Todd Phillips' approach to part two of his surprise comedy smash The Hangover (2009) is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The original made bona fide stars out of its lead trio and grossed half a billion dollars in the process, so a sequel was always going to be on the cards. The simple formula of the hapless heroes waking up from a stag night of drink, drugs and debauchery to find the groom missing and a variety of clues lying around to help them work out just what the hell happened felt fresh, and the natural charisma of its stars, particularly Zach Galifianakis, made for a hilarious experience.By sticking to the formula, Phillips has forced himself to a corner where the details have to bigger and more outlandish. Instead of Vegas, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Galifianakis) are in Thailand to celebrate Stu's upcoming wedding to Lauren (Jamie Chung). After a planned quiet night on the beach with a beer and marshmallows, they wake up in a grimy hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of the night before and inexplicably in the presence of gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeung) from the first film. When Chow seemingly overdoses on cocaine, they are left to piece things together themselves.If this was a stand-alone movie without the existence of its predecessor, then this probably would have been a winner. While its frequently goes overboard with the crass humour, its consistently amusing without succeeding in being quite so laugh-out-loud as the first movie, thanks mainly again to Galifianakis, whose man-child Alan is the funniest aspect of the film. Yet while his naivety and plain stupidity was so endearing in the original, the sequel also takes Alan to increasingly dark places. Here, he is not so much social inept but dangerously insane to the point that he becomes occasionally outright unlikeable.And this is the main issue - replacing charm and goofiness with extreme humour. Stu was missing a tooth in the first film, but this time he wakes up with a Mike Tyson tribal tattoo on his face. Rather than Tyson's tiger, we have a chain-smoking drug-mule monkey. Rather than finding Doug (Justin Bartha) vanished, they lose Lauren's prodigal younger brother Teddy (Mason Lee), to which the only clue to his participation is his severed finger. And having previously married a stripper, Stu discovers that - in the most uncomfortably unfunny scene - he has been sodomised by a ladyboy. Add to the mix a sub-plot involving gangster Kingsley (Paul Giamatti) and his search for Chow, the film spends too much time away from the hapless threesome's interplay in favour of watching their reactions to a variety of cruel situations.

Ole Sandbaek Joergensen I thought this was going to be a poor repetition of the first Hangover movie, and yes there are a few events we have seen before, but all in a new package.Bradley, Ed, Zach and Justin is back, this time they spend time with some "old" faces but we are also introduced to a few new ones. And yes they do it again, get very wasted and can't remember what happened and have to relive it all again.But it is kind of different, yes they are using old material, but it worked well the first time and it actually is okay the second time around also.

bowmanblue If you haven't seen the Hangover (Part 1) then Part 2 follows the same characters as they, again, wake up after a heavy night with no memory of what happened and plenty of new problems to deal with as a result of it. If you HAVE seen the Hangover (Part 1) then you've basically seen the second one too.A lot of review of Part 2 use phrases like, 'The Hangover Part 2 uses the same jokes, just cranked up to 11.' I sort of agree. Part 2 isn't a bad film; it's quite funny actually, its main problem is just that it doesn't offer anything new.The writers (if you can call them that) have basically taken the script to Part 1, photocopied it, changed the locations and (very) slightly adjusted the jokes and sold it to the studios as a sequel. If fact, it's probably not best described as a 'sequel,' a 'remake' might be a better label. I wonder if the writers did it on purpose, i.e. keep the situations identical in a hope that lightning would strike twice. For me, as every new crazy moment passed, I just couldn't believe how similar it was. It became almost weird just how copied it was. In the end it kind of detracted from the story as all I had to do was think back to what happened next in Part 1 to know what was coming in Part 2.That said, Part 2 is okay if you liked the first and basically want more of the same silliness. It's just a shame the makers didn't wait a little longer and come up with something just a little bit fresher.The monkey is cool though. Just don't let him near your water bottle.