The Hangover

THE HANGOVER is thin, but I laughed all the way through it. It isn't the best comedy I've seen so far this year, but it meets its goals.

Here's the setup: it's the day of the wedding. The best man; rumpled, bleeding, and standing in the middle of the desert; calls the bride and tells her, "We screwed up. We can't find Doug. I don't think the wedding's going to happen." We rewind to the beginning of the road trip, with four guys in a car on their way to Vegas for Doug's bachelor party, and away we go.

It's a fine setup for a movie, but so much depends on how far the filmmakers are willing to go to get the laugh. Fortunately, they're willing to go as far as necessary, piling the ridiculous on to the disgusting on to the witty on to the sweet. Here's a movie with legitimate comic surprises, well-delivered dialogue, and sight gags that work in themselves and as part of the larger narrative.

So I laughed, laughed, and laughed some more. But I already feel the movie slipping away. Unlike ROLE MODELS, the funniest thing I've seen in recent memory, it didn't have anything in it to hook me, to hang on to my imagination as I left the theater. The film is the cinematic equivalent of ice cream: fun while it lasts, but quickly forgotten.

Still, I can live with that. As long as you're in the theater, THE HANGOVER is a good time. That's good enough for me.