FILM « In Which We Still Have Not Recovered From This Particular Hangover »
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 2:16PM 
The Docile American Bachelor Party
by ELEANOR MORROW
God forgive me in advance for what I am about to write. A.O. Scott chickened out; it had to be me.
It is a phenomenon, it is the new Big Lebowski, it has everything we require from entertainment and more. "I haven't seen it, but I heard it's the new Old School" crooned Bill Simmons. Shut up, Bill, you're over forty with two kids and no grasp of English.
Men can't express their true feelings, so they express themselves by being away from women. That is the sterling message of Todd Phillips' 90 minute attempt to kill comedy, The Hangover.
A dentist loses a tooth. A loser schoolteacher almost forgets his head. The guy from the Kanye video acts slightly irregular. These are the "wild" dreams of middle-aged men. They are not wild, no more wild than a 16 year old's spring break, or a vibrant afternoon of text messaging. Our idea of the crazy has became crazy.
In Judd Apatow's seminal boy-on-boy-on-boy-on-boy love story, Knocked Up, Leslie Mann believes her husband Paul Rudd is cheating on her, perhaps with Phoebe Buffet. She tracked him to a magnificently empty house in the Valley, where he's participating in a fantasy baseball draft with a bunch of other repressed homosexuals. She's upset at finding out she's married a gay man? I couldn't think of any other reason she started crying in the driveway, on a movie set, in front of Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen. Maybe she really had her heart set on seeing Spiderman.
According to this way of thinking, women are just prostitutes waiting for kind and generous dentists to walk into their lives. Heather Graham looks too much like a Barbie (or admittedly a whore) to be anything but Ed Helms' paramour; a comic actress on the level of Rachael Harris is a high-strung betch who can't cheat and get away with it like Bill Clinton. Justin Bartha was in a fucking Geico commercial and NBC's horrific sitcom Teachers. He deserves no second life in the American cinema just because he banged Ashley Olsen and Lydia Hearst.
A woman places obligations on a man. Her job is to look good and hold hands at a wedding. A woman is capable of forgiveness but not of understanding, and that is the terms the "men" of The Hangover must deal with their women on. At this they don't have much of any success. That is why they are men to treasure: they can't even excel at having a good time.
Men when reduced to their primordial urges, get married and promise to take care of whores. What sorts of men are these? Where can they be found? Everywhere: capitalism has compromised their masculinity, like the eunuchs of Greek times. Men used to be able to play with boys, ask Camille Paglia and Sophocles. Now they just play with themselves.
Now they play with baseball players on Yahoo! and ESPN and they draft Hideki Matsui even though he's an aging slugger who can't play the field. Paul Rudd has two kids and wants to bang models; Bradley Cooper hates being a teacher, gets laughs for it. Seth Rogen can't grasp the good fortune that is putting his penis inside of an E! reporter -- he has to whine about it to his father, who is even more of a joke. Ed Helms can't even tell his girlfriend he's going to Vegas for a bachelor party. By the end, he wrests free of her to be the babysitter for some other, identical woman.
Erstwhile poker player Todd Phillips directed this return to more pedestrian fair. It came from a real life hangover suffered by a friend of one of the movie's producers! Just when you thought it was impossible, Entourage is becoming more like real life in retrospect. Men love stories about other men going to Las Vegas, Las Vegas likes this as well, tourism goes up, women go down. Eventually we will be sexually segregated by preferred form of entertainment. Shouldn't the sexes become more like each other instead of less? Wasn't Ellen Page an inspiration to us all?
Then again, there is a passivity bred into these creatures. They just want the weekend; the rest of the time they are totally psyched to cave in, to live a life of small-time, Adam Carolla-esque complaining. We can assume despite his history as a boxer, despite his puffy grandstanding on Los Angeles-area radio, that Carolla is a total pushover for his wife. They're family men at heart, "some guys just can't handle Vegas." In between we must suffer every measure of overdone joke imaginable.
Here are some jokes I can do without going forward:
A strange animal approaches a drug-addled male as in Harold and Kumar. A tiger isn't funny simply because it's a tiger. It's even less funny if it's Mike Tyson's tiger, especially in light of the loss of his daughter in recent weeks.
When a person is saying something inappropriate about another person and they are present, he says, "Excuse me! I'm right here!" I'm pretty sure Neil Simon wrote this joke, and I'm just as sure it's not funny.
Bradley Cooper is not funny, at least not unless Ryan Murphy is writing his dialogue. This rule also goes for Joe Rogan, but I don't think he was in The Hangover.
The all-star comedy super special cameo: I am tired of Mike Tyson, of Valerie Bertinelli (not relevant here, but still), of Frank the Tank, of Snoop Dogg in Starsky & Hutch. I blame test audiences for all of this, I blame them for being surprised so that we can't be surprised. I blame test audiences for Star Trek and The Dark Knight. It is actually possible to make a work of art that is not offensive to any particular sensibility, and not challenging to any of them. The fact that we can all agree something is entertaining is the number one indication that it's not very good.
This does not make The Dark Knight or The Hangover bad per se; it doesn't make them art either.
One comedic sensibility is learned from the previous generation. If middle-aged men find their childish man-boy escapes to the city of sin a welcome release from the economic grind of this age, fine. But good for Todd Philips for imposing an R rating. I'd rather our kids be Pixar funny than Old School-funny.
Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in Manhattan, and tumbls here.
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Reader Comments (26)
what's so great about fucking someone who works for E!?
who do i send the dry cleaning bill to? this article make a me puke on my tevas and cargo shorts.
your desire to be different and special is showing.
I agree with you on most points, but who said any of those movies are works of art?
"A tiger isn't funny simply because it's a tiger. It's even less funny if it's Mike Tyson's tiger, especially in light of the loss of his daughter in recent weeks." man, you're making me feel terrible for laughing at that tiger.
Also, Ellen Page was an inspiration?
oh, yuck!
wasn't aware the hangover was ever masquerading itself as a work of art. like most films, it targets a fuzzy audience for a few hours of basic entertainment and does so in an acceptable way
...tentious!
MORATORIUM ON GAY ASIAN VILLAIN/FOIL PLEASES. It ain't makin' anyone look any straighter.
This is good. This is smart: ignore all anger. Dumb can NOT win every argument.
Thank you! Seriously, fuck this movie in the face until it dies.
thank you for this breakdown on the number one (?!?) movie in the land. it needs to be said and talked about. also hangover was incredibly TOO LONG as well. it was like a three hour, seven course meal of fast food. i saw it for free thankfully and still wish that i had that free pass back. truth be told it was probably the best offering that a pacific theater pass could offer at the time. i mean what else would i have seen that at that multiplex hell? travolta washington's taking of pelham 123? who is this travolta washington anyway?
tourism goes up, women goes down - brilliant
"there is a passivity bred into these creatures. They just want the weekend; the rest of the time they are totally psyched to cave in, to live a life of small-time," that was amazing. I found this criticism of this movie more entertaining than I will ever find this bullshit buffet of a movie, and I agree with the guy above "fuck this movie in the face forever". What is so funny about Ed Helms missing a tooth? God, how lame.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. First Knocked Up, then Superbad, then The Hangover...I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of Apatow-produced films in between. Anyway, can the men-children PLEASE call it a day? And can we give female comedians some good roles and not relegate them to crap like Baby Mama or that Parker-Posey-Rachel-Dratch film that will never get released?
i thought it was the funniest thing i've ever seen. (:
this movie sucked but zach galifianakis should not be judged by it. he is hilarious on tim & eric and in his own stand up.
I don't think going to vegas with a bunch of guys is necessarily gay if you and said guys go to vegas with intentions of getting lapdances and doing blow off hookers (don't know how often this really happens). Do mainstream comedies really need this type of analysis? I don't think a movie becomes inherently "Gay" just because its dumb, inoffensive, and bland.
Also, I'm guessing they didn't write Mike Tyson's role around the death of his daughter... kinda of a low (weird) blow.
a bad article about a bad movie, how post modern
In what world is losing a front tooth and a tiger in a hotel bathroom not crazy? Granted, it's not the psychologically poignant kind of crazy we get in, say, a movie like Husbands, but think about how boring and unfunny that thing was.
I'm taking a big leap here and guessing the author of this piece like Juno.
Not saying it's a good movie but if one has construed it as anything more than a mindless bit of entertainment for a group of people too drunk and/or stoned to go out in public then you are already giving it too much credit.
If anything the movie is funny because it is almost exactly what every guy imagines happening or wishes happened to them in Vegas but in reality we all drink too much, gamble too much and end up going to sleep in far tamer circumstances. I think most of us who have been to Vegas for any sort of "bachelor" party or even "guys' trip" to Vegas wishes we could say even just one of those events happened to us (stolen cop car, random hooker's baby, ending up married, attacked by a chinese gangster, stuck with a tiger, tazered in a police station) but in reality we wake up with much less eventful hangovers and lament how much money we blew attempting to get close to something even slightly crazy.
And if your issue is with the fact that men decide to place themselves in situations they either don't want or are not ready for (kids, marriage, career, etc) then wake up, it's plainly visible in every day life and the movie is just holding the binoculars for you. Plus you're pretending like uncovering the fact that most men wish they still were, looked like, drank like, had friends like, were athletes like and partied like they were 21 is something new. I'll agree the Apatow poo parade has more than run it's course; Knocked Up was the ugly fat couple that copulated and produced the most unfunny and way too long Superbad. But thank god we did not have to see Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill, the portly duo from hell, do yet more cinematic career stroking in this film. I'll take Bradley Cooper and his lack of wit over Jonah Hill and his lack of wit any day.
Bradley Cooper hates being a teacher, gets laughs for it. Seth Rogen can't grasp the good fortune that is putting his penis inside of an E! reporter -- he has to whine about it to his father, who is even more of a joke. Ed Helms can't even tell his girlfriend he's going to Vegas for a bachelor party. By the end, he wrests free of her to be the babysitter for some other, identical woman.
"place yourself in the background." strunk & white
First time I couldn't finish reading an article on This Recording. There is no criticism going on here, just pure bitching. You know what they say on Youtube though, 'if you don't like it, gtfo.' Thumbs up if you like this.
Not sure that this article actually said anything at all, it was just a list of incoherent whining. After reading, I'm still not sure what the author's problem is.
And what does The Dark Knight have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about slightly dubious bloke comedy?
I don't think men go to Las Vegas or some other place for a weekend because they cannot face the reality of their adult responsiblities. They go to spend one weekend of the year or more likely years with friends they have fun with. I don't understand why this is considered shallow or immature. It is not mysoginistic to play craps for a few hours and drink beer.
A strange animal approaches a drug-addled male as in Harold and Kumar. A tiger isn't funny simply because it's a tiger. It's even less funny if it's Mike Tyson's tiger, especially in light of the loss of his daughter in recent weeks.
This one is really funny LOL :)
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Bill Simmons has "no grasp of English."
Those who live in glass houses and all.