There’s no cure for this hellish Hangover – Rude crude and deeply unfunny, the worst sequel of all time will make your stomach churn

By Chris Tookey

Last updated at 1:31 AM on 27th May 2011

The Hangover Part II  (15)

Verdict: Is it too late to take out an injunction against this?

No stars

The Hangover Part II is the worst sequel of all time. I realise that is quite a claim. After all, the 20th century gave us Death Wish II, Child’s Play 3 and Return To The Blue Lagoon.

The 21st has already thrown up such hideous cultural artefacts as Saw III, Daddy Day Camp and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.

But The Hangover Part II trounces all competition by being four diabolical movies in one. It offers an aggressively bone-headed glorification of male sexism, a toe-curlingly racist view of the non-American world, and a Gary Glitterish celebration of sex tourism.

Monkey, but no magic (from left): Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galiflanakis in The Hangover part II

Not content with being uniquely repellent as a one-off movie, it also reflects a comprehensive misunderstanding of its predecessor’s success.

Two years ago, I gave The Hangover a five-star review. Despite that albatross around its neck, it became the surprise hit of 2009, and was acclaimed as the funniest comedy of its year by critics and audiences alike. It went on to gross almost $500 million worldwide.

So it is no surprise that the sequel seeks to repeat the winning formula. But the original film entertained as buddy-buddy comedy by building up the three men’s nightmarish predicament with plenty of imagination, a far-fetched but logical plot, and a breathless pace.

Analysing it seriously, it was the comedic equivalent to Fight Club: a journey into the heart of masculine darkness, with males being portrayed as dangerous to others and themselves if they don’t come to terms with their responsibilities to females and family.

The happy ending came when they grew up, which was one reason why, despite the movie’s gross-out humour, many women found it as funny and heart-warming as men did.

Tragically, the sequel shows director Todd Phillips (who also made the original) hasn’t a clue why the first film worked. 

As for his woefully inept co-writers Craig Mazin (Superhero Movie) and Scot Armstrong (Semi-Pro), their one idea is to duplicate the original — often scene by scene, and sometimes even shot by shot — but extract every vestige of humour with ruthless precision, replacing it with foul language, violence and obscenity.

The film’s only noteworthy achievement is that it contains more uses of the f-word and c-word than any other 15 certificate picture in the history of cinema.

Idon’t know anyone who isn’t a member of the British Board of Film Classification who would consider this a suitable movie to show 15-year-olds.

By the time convicted rapist Mike Tyson closes this sorry sleazefest and captures its ethos all too accurately by indulging in a talent-less, tone-deaf rendition of One Night In Bangkok — to which the on-screen characters react as if he is the miraculous reincarnation of all four Beatles — the male protagonists show no sign at all that they have matured.

In fact, the reverse is true. They learn to embrace and celebrate the side of them that is most depraved, sordid and criminally irresponsible.

Bizarrely, this is supposed to make their womenfolk and one’s prospective father-in-law respect them more.

What world do these film-makers live in? Not this one, that’s for sure — and theirs is a thousand light-years from Planet Funny.

Original and best: 2009’s The Hangover was a box office hit

In The Hangover Part II, three youngish men wake up hungover after a bachelor party, not in a luxurious Las Vegas hotel, but in seedy, downtown Bangkok, to discover that Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the eternal adolescent with a history of child molesting and drug abuse, has acquired a shaven head and a chain-smoking capuchin monkey; Stu (Ed Helms), the mild-mannered dentist about to get married, sports an ugly facial tattoo like Tyson’s; while ring-leader Phil (Bradley Cooper) discovers they have mislaid all except the amputated ring-finger of the groom’s 16-year-old future brother-in-law (Mason Lee), a talented cellist and aspiring surgeon.

They also find themselves sharing their room with the Asian gangster from the first movie (Ken Jeong) — who promptly snorts cocaine and suffers cardiac arrest.

The movie then dutifully repeats the formula of the first movie, with the friends not stealing a police car this time, but inexplicably kidnapping a Buddhist monk. And they run foul of Russian gangsters, not Asian ones.

And Stu learns that, instead of ‘marrying’ a beautiful female escort, this time he has slept with a transsexual prostitute.

Along with laughs, what is missing from these proceedings is any degree of plausibility.

It doesn’t cross Stu’s mind, despite his medical training, that he may have contracted HIV and be in danger of passing it on to his future bride.

No one behaves with grief or shock that a talented cellist has lost a crucial finger. Nor, indeed, does the young man himself seem upset at having less than his full complement of digits.

They don’t feel any remorse as  U.S. tourists that they have trashed a foreign bar, caused a riot and inconvenienced the local police.

And the legal authorities appear equally unconcerned that they have done so.

Because little is plausible and nothing is funny, all the actors mug horribly in disastrous attempts to compensate.

The level of humour is summed up in a scene when Alan uses a soda bottle to simulate an erection under the old Buddhist priest’s robes, and their monkey simulates a sex act on the bottle.

This is greeted with uproarious laughter by Americans, Thais and even the ancient monk himself.

Alan celebrates this high-point in international relations with the line ‘When a monkey nibbles a penis, it’s funny in any language!’

As I looked around at the stony faces of my colleagues, I couldn’t help reflecting that Alan was being over-optimistic.

Other attempts to inspire belly-laughs include Alan shooting off an automatic weapon in a crowded bar, one of them — and the monkey — suffering gruesome gunshot wounds, and another being offered the services of a child prostitute.

Any of these ‘gags’ would be problematic in skilled hands. Fumbled by Mr Phillips with all the dexterity of King Kong wearing boxing gloves, they die an exquisitely horrible, lingering death.

The one redeeming factor is that Stu does eventually own up to his bad behaviour and immorality, if not to the likelihood of sexual infection. In this country, he’d probably take out a super-injunction and threaten to sue anyone who told the truth.

I realise nothing can prevent millions of people from buying tickets for The Hangover II, and don’t let me stop you. You have every right to make up your own mind.

By all means act on the assumption that I am a morally judgmental snob. But don’t blame me if you then discover for yourself that this movie stinks.