Almost universally panned by critics, Hangover Part 2 has nevertheless become the most lucrative comedy EVER made. Even if sequels and franchises pale in comparison, they can now make a lot more than their source material. As this NY Mag article quotes Christoper McQuarrie (who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The Usual Suspects, and most recently wrote the Wolverine sequel), “I wouldn’t even pitch an original idea anymore. What (studios) want- through no fault of their own- is a piece of pre-existing material that’s survived some sort of a litmus test…” We can expect more of the ‘sequel cash cow’ effect with nine sequels being released in the coming months. But back to ‘Sex & The City 2: Bangkok Boys’…
In France, ‘Hangover Part 2’ is called ‘Very Bad Trip 2’ (in English, just those words). The French title sums up the movie for me- a little patronizing, a little funny, a little transparent, a little lost in translation and the general notion that this is Round 2. The cringing starts quite early on as the ‘Wolf Pack’ walk slow mo through the airport for Thailand (refer to photo above): Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ is blasting. Cool, got it, “what doesn’t kill you, can only make you stronger”. Soon after landing in Thailand, the tone is set. Bangkok is portrayed as though a group of jocks around a conference table (let’s call this the writers room for the movie) were asked to shout out key words that sprung to mind when the city is mentioned- Monks! Dodgy tattoos! Ladyboys! Drugs! Dirty! Riots! No English! As if trying to convince a Buddhist monk who has taken a vow of silence to speak- just so they can retrace their drunken steps- isn’t offensive enough, they proceed to call another monk a ‘bald asshole’ and pretend that a monk has a boner which the monkey is sucking on (the monkey being the fifth member of the pack- or the New York City to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda). “A monkey licking a boner is funny in any language” proclaims Galifianakis. Really?
The plot holes are far too numerous to go through- sure it’s a comedy and I get that you have to leave some semblance of reality at the door, but are we really expected to believe / relate when they guys are goofing off a few minutes after they’ve stuffed a friend’s body in a freezer? As expected, the female characters are non-existent for all intents and purposes- those that do appear are hot partners of the Wolf Pack or else they’re Asian strippers- oh, but they end up being ladyboys. Yep it’s the jock-centric writers room’s greatest fear: anal penetration. It writes itself.
Galifianakis is the highlight of the ensemble cast and does provide some laugh-out-loud LOL’s. He’s perfected being ‘Zach Galifianakis’ and you suspect that he’s about to start becoming typecast as the pitiable outsider- which is a shame since he is a gifted comedian and actor. Where Bradley Cooper was charming and sort of endearing in the first movie, he just comes across as a jerk this time around. Ed Helms and Ken Jeong are solid, playing their characters from The Office and Community respectively. Strangely, Mike Tyson’s 5-minute cameo at the end of the movie was one of the highlights, watching him performance a god-awful rap rendition of “One Night in Bangkok” and stiffly moving about the wedding stage was too good.
Whether you could get past the glaring shortcomings of this movie or not, there were definitely a few laughs to be had. And maybe that’s all you wanted out of this movie. This much is guaranteed, there will be a third big night, there will be a third hangover, and they’ll all be saying “It’s happened again”.
Title Image- Still from “The Hangover 2”
