How funny is The Hangover? Funny enough to get the two guys in the next row off their Crackberries for minutes at a time. I used to go to the movies in the early afternoon, when no one was there. Now, I go to the last show of the evening, which is often the same, except that the few who are at last call are sleepier. So it was gratifying to sit with a full, and mostly attentive, post-10pm audience for a change.

I watched The Hangover with ’80s flashbacks in mind. Its crassness isn’t a lot different than, say, that of 1984’s Bachelor Party, a credit in the “other work” section of Tom Hanks’ resume these days. The Hangover is Bachelor Party cross-bred with Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985), with the Vegas section of the underrated Go (1999) thrown in. It’s a hybrid that runs on its own steam, and despite the lateness of the hour I would’ve texted “LOL!” to all my buddies if I had a device handy (no, I wouldn’t have). The only annoying thing about it is that I may have to check out the two other hit comedies written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, Four Christmases and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, to see how they got here. Someday.

They specialize in stories centered on visiting and revisiting, and their idea this time was clever: Take all the standard wild-night-in-Vegas business and turn it into a comic mystery. Laid out end-to-end, the movie wouldn’t be as amusing as it is. Removing 12 hours from the story, then retracing them, was inspired. Director Todd Phillips, who made the semi-classic Old School (2003), paired the concept with actors who come to mesh as a team. Bachelor Justin Bartha, who sits out most of the movie, gets the film in gear with his disappearance but doesn’t really count. The heavy lifting is done, and done well, by a slyly misogynistic Bradley Cooper (who I figured for a big push when he co-starred with Julia Roberts and the rising Paul Rudd in the headline-grabbing Broadway revival of Three Days of Rain a couple of seasons back), Ed Helms (purposefully aggravating on The Office, more appealing here as a strait-jacketed single) and the out-to-lunch Zach Galifianakis, referred to in the movie as “Fat Jesus,” and a natural for Hagar the Horrible if he ever makes it to the big screen. (more…)