You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The Hangover II
I did something I rarely do. I went to an early movie by myself. I end up meeting a friend who joins me in a theater that has less action than a kissing booth at a senior citizen’s home.
Let me say this right up front. I liked the movie. It is arguably funnier than the first one.
The premise is similar. The three best friends anyone could have get hammered and spend most of the film trying to piece together a night more questionable than a petri dish at a female biker bar.
The first film took place in sin city. That was neon colored fantasy.
Hangover II is filmed in Bangkok which looks like the birth place of venereal disease.
The premise is simple: Stew is getting married to a girl whose family is from Thailand. Or Thigh-land as Phil says repeatedly.
So the boys fly to a beautiful resort on the ocean. They won’t be there long.
The first 28 minutes lets us know that Alan is still crazy, Phil likes to say the F word and Stu’s father in law thinks Stu is soft like warm rice.
Then the first turning point arrives, as predictable as a drum solo at a Motely Crue concert.
The boy’s toast one another on the beach. They joke about ruffies in their drinks, and then Bam – someone turns out the lights.
FADE IN: Sunrise over a city where even Satan locks his doors.
CUT TO: A sweltering apartment with no power. Cockroaches are so big they flip you the bird while drinking Budweiser.
The boys are lying face down in a bucket of multi colored vomit. They are sweaty and covered with bruises. Stu has a tattoo on his face that looks like a warriors ass.
The boys have lost Teddy, a teenage boy who is also Stu’s future brother in law. There’s a satanic looking monkey smoking Marlboro’s and slinging dope like a banana banging drug mule.
Mr. Chow is on the couch, his face covered with enough blow to make Scarface jealous.
To me, Bangkok itself is the star of the movie.
CUT TO: Skyscraper roof. The camera pans across a 5 star restaurant 100 stories in the air. A wide shot reveals a sprawling city, an Asian paradise.
CUT TO: The street below is a festering canchor sore.
It’s one big dirty market where one armed pirates sell pig snouts. It’s DNA slime dripping off the eaves of the tenement buildings that choke out the light. It’s puddles of human excrement splashing onto your pants from every passing rick shaw.
Bangkok is filth. There is a stench you can feel through the screen. There is a congestion that comes from 13 million people who all talk at the same time. There is a constant traffic jam going in both directions at once. The Thai language is unsettling. it is a grating series of hooked on phonics nonsense constructed by Dr. Seuss and a cracked kazoo.
When talking about young Teddy’s disappearance, the character’s routinely say “Bangkok has him”
Its appropriate. The city is a coffin filled with death and billowing black smoke from a million buses with no catalytic converters.
Bangkok is a broken sewer pipe channeling human filth into a murky river where people bathe with oxen.
It’s so foul it’s compelling.
What a great backdrop for a story. I just don’t think Muskegon Michigan would have offered the same array of visual stench.
The movie was funny. So funny I found myself stifling my laughter.
I covered my mouth with my hand. I shoved my tongue into my own pie hole to squash my inner hyena.
Why?
Because there were only three other people in the theater. Maybe I went at a weird time. Maybe there was a city wide fire drill I didn’t know about. Maybe the movie has run its course and it’s about to go to DVD.
I don’t have a reason why there were only four people in theater at 6pm on a Monday evening, but we owned the place.
For me, that was part of the excitement. I could throw my leg up over the seat in front of me and kick back like I was home.
It was my movie theater. I could throw pop corn at my own face and if I missed, so what. Who cares? I sure as hell don’t.
Let the zit faced movie guys clean up, I’m watching me some Hangover Jack.
The beauty of the venue? When I laughed, It echoed off the walls. I could actually hear my own cackles ricocheting around the theater like a laughter bullet fired from a Smith and Wesson deep inside my funny bone.
There were scenes so idiotic, so immersed in lunacy, that i found myself chortling and blowing snot bubbles out of my eyes.
In a big theater full of patrons with no social conscious, you can scream fire from the tops of your lungs, and nobody is going to hear you laugh over the cacophony of confusion. In a theater full of teenagers, full of Ozzy Osborne ring tones, gossip girls, and Mr. I gotta get up to pee again, you are lucky to catch two funny lines in a row.
But in this empty crypt, you heard every line delivered by the actors. At times you had to almost throttle back your laughter so it didn’t piss off the other three movie goers.
I didn’t want the chick sitting next to me to say “Ah excuse me, laughing boy. But your obnoxious gasping is ruining my movie experience.”
Nope, don’t want that.
While the movie was funny, and reasonably well constructed, with some interesting character sub plots, I felt it was unnecessarily gratuitous.
I saw more male appendage in this film than I saw at the YMCA whirlpool on equal opportunity Wednesday.
There was a monkey licking male genitalia. Mr. Chow showed off little Chow. There was even full frontal nudity on an exotic dancer with breasts.
I’m thinking they could have gotten the same laughs showing me less front and more back. This would have revealed Stu’s horror looking at the exotic dancer’s hunk-o-junk. His facial expression would have been even funnier, framed by man ass.
Instead, I found myself hiding my face in my hands. I don’t want to see another dude’s junk. Not while I’m reaching into a medium bag of popcorn oozing with warm butter. It made me feel kind of icky.
I can see why this film is rated R. It ain’t filmed in Bangkok for nothing.
But all in all; this movie gets a thumbs up, like a proctologist checking you from the prostate on out.
And that my friends is crazy.