The Hangover

City Paper Grade: B+

by Drew Lazor

HANGING WITH MR. COOPER: Bradley Cooper plays rakish schoolteacher Phil in Todd Phillips' The Hangover.

[ City Paper Grade: B+ ]

More than a few contemporary comedies — think Superbad, Knocked Up and, if the trailer has anything to say about it, the upcoming Funny People — have earned praise for tempering occasionally sexist and homophobic joke-cracking with discussions of human insecurity. The Hangover, from Old School director Todd Phillips, does not fall into that attaboy subgenre. Not even close. It's sophomoric and preposterous, and will repeatedly offend those with sensitive crass-o-meters. It is also so funny that you will rupture your pancreas laughing. Mensch-y Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting hitched, so he rounds up his best friends — rakish school teacher Phil (Bradley Cooper), p-whipped dentist Stu (Ed Helms) and brother of the bride/possible sex offender/idiot savant Alan (Zach Galifianakis, firing on all 9 million ridiculous cylinders) — for a trip to Vegas. They take a shot of Jäger to kick off an evening to remember ... then they wake up in their own sick, expensive suite destroyed, brains wiped, groom missing. What follows is the "throw them into a series of horrible situations the screenwriters thought of while stoned!" approach that we've seen before, but it works so well here due to seamless comedic interplay — each of the three leads fits perfectly into his respective archetypal boots, with an endless conga line of cameo kings and a faint sprinkle of male nudity to seal the cracks. (The only miss is Judd Apatow regular Ken Jeong, who does himself a disservice by taking his already exaggerated Chinese gangster beyond the realm of good ethnic bit player taste.) The screenwriters half-try to show that the boys have grown by the end (a sequel's in the works), which is exactly the right amount of effort for a movie that features both a tiger and Heather Graham as characters.

Check out Molly Eichel's chat with Bradley Cooper on Critical Mass.