It’s nice the producers of “The Hangover 2” loved the original so much they gave us the same movie again except in Bangkok. Unoriginal sentiment? Yes, but “The Hangover 2” deserves it for being an unoriginal movie. Unusually dark and lacking in the adventurous tone the original possessed, “The Hangover 2” is essentially the same formula except switched and mismatched for the audience to believe they’re watching something new. Of course, I put myself in to the mindset of the writers and wondered where else they could have gone with the sequel. It’s called “The Hangover,” there was a first movie about a hangover, and now we’re back to the sequel which will deal with what exactly? A hangover, I presume.
But would it have hurt them to deliver the premise in a not so hackneyed form of storytelling this time around rather than just giving us the exact same premise with the beat for beats that kept audiences coming back the first time? There’s even a musical number with Ed Helms, the confrontation with a wild animal, and celebrity cameos all littered around to not so much sell us on this sequel, as much as remind us why the original was so popular in the first place. This time around the wolf pack crew are headed for Phil’s wedding this time around. To make it abundantly clear this is the same movie, Justin Bartha only shows up for a quarter of the film and plays supporting by long distance.
One thing leads to another and the group ends up in Bangkok! With a ram shackled room, a severed finger, and no memory of the night before they have to piece together the clues to figure out where Phil’s future brother in law went. And why he decided to bail on them. Pretty much the original film, with kidnapping plots and all. Except it’s tough to find humor in a city filled with squalor (to paraphrase Mr. Chow), so much of the new material is based around their poor economy, bad living conditions and pedophilia. Yes, pedophilia.
“The Hangover 2” wants to basically be the second leg in a proposed trilogy for the wolf pack but at this rate they’re just feeding us the same movie time and time again to shield the fact that there isn’t much original content to be mined from this premise. Sure you can put these men anywhere in the world and you can place them in any situation with the enormous amount of celebrities and hype, but at the end of the day there isn’t anything here you can’t already see by watching the original movie, already an over hyped and bloated comedy with appeal I’ll never truly understand. While there are moments where it does try for something unique and interesting, it’s a dark and morbid cash-in and nothing more.