If there is a type of movie that can get away with almost anything that is stupid, gross, offensive, or just all around dumb by feigning as made for a certain demographic, it is the ‘’dumb guy movie’’ genre. With examples made from people like Seth Rogan and Seth MacFarlane, dumb guy movies usually relies on very little intelligence or thoughtful planning and instead have a lot of stupid shock humor that’s either gross-out, sexual or both to get a laugh out of people. That is not to say that dumb guy humor can’t be done right, there’s plenty of action films that can get a similar feel, and there’s certainly plenty of ‘’dumb girl movies’’ out there, but this form of movie is very easy to make and incredibly plentiful with examples like Bad Neighbours, the remake of Baywatch, and the movie of topic today arguably being the most famous example of a dumb guy movie, The Hangover. Right before their best friend, Doug (played by Justin Bartha) gets married, his best friends Stu (played by Ed Helms) and Phil (played by Bradley Cooper) decide to take their bachelor party to Vegas. Along with his wife’s brother Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis), the four take off and have the night of their lives, so much so that they wake up the next day remembering nothing from last night and find that Doug has gone missing. With the wedding only a few days away and the groom missing in action, the trio have to traverse the bizarre and hostile streets of Vegas to find their friend before they get found out or worse. Made in 2009, The Hangover was a film that despite having a set-up and comedy that would normally push a lot of people away, proved to be highly successful in drawing people in, being a huge commercial and critical success. Though the movie is still filled with annoying and dull humor and a pretty one-note idea, it is also filled with enough good funny actors, a talented director and enough stabilisation between the annoyance that makes it a bland but sustainable watch.

The initial concept for the film about a group of friends trying to track down a lost friend after a bender in Vegas is one that can offer up some wild scenarios and a cute laugh upon its first viewing, but it’s also one that easily loses its momentum after the movie settles. It’s an open opportunity to allow for a lot of crazy, bizarre and humorous instances that work as short little sketches, but barely functions as an actual film with how little else is going on in the film, which leaves any moment that’s not a random encounter feeling like padding. Based on an event that happen to a friend of the executive producer of the film, it allows the movie to explore the streets of Las Vegas without the restrictions of having to stick to a plot and this freedom allows the movie to be more spontaneous and unexpecting than other comedies that have a standard formula. In that regard, this lack of a strong narrative does allow the humor to fully take over the movie which could have turned into a positive thing if the style of humor was smarter than a kindergartener. With such simplistic, obvious, and often needlessly ‘’adult’’ humor, it gets repetitive and stale really quickly outside of the occasionally funny reaction and situation. The director of the movie, who would later go on to making the Oscar nominated film Joker, does a pretty good job leading these actors along a story that doesn’t really work outside of its comedic format; despite the film’s really weak narrative glue holding it together, the talent behind the screen enables it to at least feel competently done.

While the writing for the film being terrible and forgettable in a movie that is solely counting on its humor to make it work would normally result in a disaster, most of these predictable bits are saved by the people reading the lines. These actors are fully committed to the roles they are designed for and the material they have been given, with both being pretty simplistic and easy to work with. The main three actors actually do have decent chemistry with each other; being able to work off the other’s one-note character trait pretty effective and legitimately feel like they become an actual friends group by the end (very similar to how the actors actually became friends over the course of the film’s production). While the main three are well acted, it still leaves their characters feeling incredibly simplistic resulting in each one only having one type of joke each can have; Cooper will say something cool and often harsh, Helms will be overly paranoid and talk about his wife, and Galifianakis will just say something weird. The side characters are not very useful or even that charming when they get screen time outside of a nice Heather Graham cameo. Characters like Mister Chow played by Ken Jeong are pure products of this type of comedy; with no care or thought put behind what makes them funny outside of an annoying voice and saying something rude and crass, its unmemorable, dumb, lazy and painful to sit through.

The movie actually manages to get some beautiful shots of Las Vegas, doing a great job not only establishing the environment very cleanly and with great angles showing off the massive size, but also showing off how insane and unpredictable the place can be. Its style of humor of relying on random non-sequiturs fits perfectly with the risky yet tempting area of Vegas and its shows off a lot of flashy buildings as well as overly random problems like Mike Tyson’s tiger being in their bathroom or one of them getting married to a hooker accidently. If it were written well and had variety in its humor outside of bland dialogue and stupid crass physical humor, this could have been a fun stupid film. Outside of the reactions that come from the main trio, most of the stuff that’s supposed to be funny in this movie is either lazily standard or annoyingly childish, with a heavier focus on being edgy and forcing down their MA rating instead of being clever and creating some good timeless humor. It does match the environment, scenario and writing style that the film starts off with, but when everything that is said is crazy and rude even before the crazy adventure begins, there’s no surprise or change of pace when the humor gets going, making everything feel exactly the same and ruins any chance of freshness.

The Hangover was honestly filled with enough positives that holds it back from being a terrible movie and the most tragic thing about the film is that with a smarter writing team behind it with some better thought out jokes, this movie could have worked out really well as everything else feels well thought out. The directing is good, the actors have very good timing and reactions, the environment is appropriate and would allow for some interesting situations, and while the concept would only work for one film, it was left open enough to allow for anything to happen, leaving room for whatever funny situation they could think off. Instead it gave the audience racist stereotypes and tasers in genitals; a sorrowful reminder that this is a dumb men’s movie. While it would plummet downwards with every pointless sequel and the material was so lame even Lindsay Lohan would not be a part of it, The Hangover is still well constructed and acted enough that one viewing is fine. See for yourself if it deserves to be praised as highly as it is, or do you think that this was a bender that should have stayed hidden in Vegas.