The Hang­over Part III

“The end of laugh­ter and soft lies… The end of nights we tried to die… This is the end.” – ​‘The End’, The Doors

Yes, a comedic era comes to a con­clu­sion with this, the clos­ing chap­ter of the Hang­over saga. An age in which lib­er­tar­i­an heroes were born to great deeds now fades into leg­end. Or at least that’s what the mak­ers of this third and appar­ent­ly final incur­sion into the frat-pack debauch­ery of cinema’s longest stag-do would have us believe. So cer­tain are they that the movie-going world holds this inter­mit­tent­ly enter­tain­ing franchise’s tol­er­a­ble quar­tet of grade‑A prank-span­ners as close to their hearts as they do Sam and Fro­do or Han, Luke and Leia.

This time out there’s no hang­over to bind the guys togeth­er and pro­pel the plot into a causal­ly-non­sen­si­cal parade of com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tions. Instead, weird-beard Alan’s (Zak Gal­i­fi­anakis) increas­ing­ly socio­path­ic behav­iour is the spur for the Wolf­pack to recon­vene in order to dri­ve him to Ari­zona for a course of cor­rec­tive ther­a­py in some upscale laugh­ing acad­e­my. In oth­er words: road trip!

In short order they are run off the high­way by some car­toon ban­di­tos led by John Good­man, and Doug (poor Justin Bartha, who in the course of these films has spent more screen­time with a bag on his head than any­one since John Hurt in The Ele­phant Man) is tak­en hostage until such time as the guys can locate the where­abouts of… wait for it… yes, Les­ley Chow (Ken Jeong) – who has made off with a good­ly pile of Goodman’s loot.

Cue one long, just-about-bear­able vol­ley of off-the-peg Tex-Mex dou­ble-cross­es, some mid­dling car­nage, and Gal­i­fi­anakis clear­ly writ­ing his own dia­logue on the hoof and steal­ing the show in the process. Not that there’s much com­pe­ti­tion. The oth­er two Wolf­pack­ers – and the­o­ret­i­cal leads – Bradley Coop­er and Ed Helms look notably dis­tract­ed through­out, as if this par­tic­u­lar party’s gone on just a bit too long for them and they could real­ly do with fresh­en­ing up and get­ting on with oth­er busi­ness. Jeong, as ever, is a treat, but even though his totes crazy­balls schtick nev­er gets old, it has start­ed to get a lit­tle repetitive.

And so the cur­tain falls. The mon­ster suc­cess of this some­what unlike­ly fran­chise has con­fused many. Cred­it­ed with rein­vent­ing the ​‘raunchy com­e­dy’, look­ing back it’s notice­able just how tame the whole thing has been. In the first film, for instance, all the booz­ing takes place off­screen, nobody has sex, nobody dies, and the one instance of drug tak­ing is invol­un­tary. It’s hard­ly lagergeddon.

What the series has offered is some bawdi­ly genial japes with a decent bunch of actors who all share an unde­ni­able chem­istry. Well and good, but don’t go into The Hang­over Part III expect­ing the sort of epic con­clu­sion or ​‘Rosebud’-style requiem to the pass­ing of an age promised by the mar­ket­ing posters – it’s only shits’n’giggles, brah.