The Hang­over

Ah, the stag do: a night of drunk­en ridicu­lous­ness designed for men to enjoy their last night of free­dom before tak­ing the plunge and chain­ing them­selves to their women for all eter­ni­ty, or at least until the divorce is finalised.

It’s an event so ripe for enter­tain­ment val­ue that the prospect of direc­tor Todd Phillips’ com­e­dy in which three grooms­men take their friend to Las Vegas for a bach­e­lor par­ty didn’t bode well. It’s been done to death, from dark strip­per mur­der­ing satire (Very Bad Things) to slap­stick throw­away ​’80s fare (Bach­e­lor Par­ty), and depict­ing a bunch of men get­ting drunk can’t exact­ly be done in too many fresh ways. But thank­ful­ly, from the out­set The Hang­over man­ages to put a new spin on this curi­ous male rite of passage.

Doug (Justin Bartha) is two days away from get­ting mar­ried, and along with his friends Phil (Bradley Coop­er), Stu (Ed Helms) and soon to be broth­er-in-law Alan (Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis), he heads from LA to Vegas for the par­ty. Flash for­ward and they wake up hun­gover, com­plete­ly unaware of what hap­pened in a trashed suite at Caesar’s Palace with an aban­doned baby in a cup­board, a few miss­ing trousers and teeth, Mike Tyson’s tiger in the bath­room with the groom nowhere to be seen.

Instead of watch­ing the night unrav­el, the audi­ence, much like the char­ac­ters, are com­plete­ly in the dark and are thrown into a series of furi­ous­ly paced set ups as the boys are forced to retrace their steps in order to find Doug. The real­i­sa­tion of what occurred that fate­ful night soon becomes painful­ly clear.

Every­thing works here; the char­ac­ters are fun­ny, the set-ups are fun­ny, the lines are fun­ny and even the odd moments of ran­dom­ness (Mike Tyson singing ​‘In the Air Tonight’ has to be seen to be believed) don’t seem too out there. While the Apa­tow clan have seem­ing­ly sin­gle-hand­ed­ly tak­en over Hol­ly­wood com­e­dy, it’s nice to see some­one else come up with a gen­uine­ly and con­sis­tent­ly fun­ny film.