The Hangover

The Hangover
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Todd Phillips
Written by	Jon Lucas Scott Moore Todd Phillips (uncredited) Jeremy Garelick (uncredited)
Produced by	Todd Phillips Daniel Goldberg
Starring	Bradley Cooper Ed Helms Zach Galifianakis Heather Graham Justin Bartha Jeffrey Tambor
Cinematography	Lawrence Sher
Edited by	Debra Neil-Fisher
Music by	Christophe Beck
Production company	Legendary Pictures
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	June 5, 2009
Running time	100 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$75 millions($35 million production budget, $40 million marketing budget)
Box office	$366,449,550

The Hangover is a Template:Fy comedy film directed by Todd Phillips. The main plot follows four friends who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, only to wake up the next morning not remembering a thing and missing the groom, whose wedding is scheduled to occur the next day. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, and Heather Graham. The film was released in North America on June 5, 2009 to critical praise and box office success.

Plot

Doug (Justin Bartha) is about to be married to Tracy (Sasha Barrese), so his friends — Phil (Bradley Cooper), a schoolteacher bored of the married life, Stu (Ed Helms), a dentist with a strict and controlling girlfriend, and Doug's socially inept soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) — take him to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, driving an immaculate 1969 Mercedes Benz 280 SE loaned to them by Doug's soon-to-be father-in-law (Jeffrey Tambor). Stu's girlfriend (Rachael Harris) constantly calls him, forcing him to lie to her about their location.

The four friends get a suite at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino, then sneak onto the roof and toast to the night ahead. The next morning, the three groomsmen awake in the suite with no memory of the previous night. They find that Doug is missing, Stu has lost a tooth, a tiger is in the bathroom, a baby is in the closet, and the suite is in severe disorder. Initially they believe Doug has gone for breakfast, but worry when they find his phone still in the room. Alan discovers Stu's tooth in his pocket and a VIP parking pass, and Stu finds an ATM receipt for $800, further exacerbating their confusion. Outside the hotel Stu inquires as to why there is a mattress impaled on a statue, and a departing guest tells him, "Some guys just can't handle Vegas." The valet brings the groomsmen a police cruiser that they dropped off the night before, ostensibly stolen.

Discovering that Phil is wearing a hospital bracelet, the groomsmen head to the hospital and learn that they had roofies in their blood, explaining their memory loss. Their doctor (Matt Walsh) tells them they came from a wedding at the "Best Little Chapel". Visiting the chapel they learn that Stu married a girl named Jade (Heather Graham) and gave her his grandmother's Holocaust ring in the ceremony, which he had intended to use to propose to his girlfriend after Doug's wedding. In the parking lot they are attacked by two thugs who smash the windshield of the police cruiser and shoot the chapel owner in the shoulder. The men escape and track down Jade, who turns out to be the baby's mother and works as an escort and stripper. Metropolitan police burst into her apartment to arrest the three groomsmen for stealing their police cruiser. Phil points out the potential embarrassment for the officers (Cleo King and Rob Riggle) if the story of their lost squad car gets out, so they work out a deal in which the men "volunteer" as targets for a taser demonstration. The three friends retrieve their Mercedes from an impound and search it for clues as to Doug's whereabouts, but as they are driving back to the hotel, they hear a banging from within the trunk. When they open it to investigate, they are attacked by a naked man who then runs away. Alan admits to spiking their drinks the night before with what he thought was ecstasy, hoping they would have a better time, but realizes the drug dealer must have sold him roofies instead.

They return to the hotel to look for further evidence, but find former boxing champion Mike Tyson in their room, arriving there while locating his kidnapped tiger. Tyson knocks out Alan and orders them to return his exotic pet that they stole from his mansion during the night. The groomsmen tranquilize the tiger by feeding it a steak laced with roofies so they can transport it in the Mercedes, but the tiger wakes up en route and damages their car. They push the car the rest of the way to Tyson's home and return the tiger, after which Tyson plays security footage of the groomsmens' activities from the night before in an effort to help them locate Doug.

Resuming their search for the groom, the three are attacked again by the thugs, who, it turns out, are led by the naked man they found in the trunk of their car, Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong). According to Chow, they mixed up bags at a casino the night before, and the groomsmen have $80,000 of his money. Chow demands it back in exchange for Doug, whom he has kidnapped. Unable to find the money, Alan uses his knowledge of card counting to win it playing blackjack. The money is repaid, but Chow had kidnapped a different Doug (Mike Epps), who turns out to be the drug dealer who sold Alan the roofies.

Stu realizes where Doug is after drug-dealer Doug questions the reasoning behind the term "roofies," saying they are more likely to leave you on the floor than on the roof. Stu deduces that the mattress the groomsmen thought they had thrown from their hotel room must have come from the roof after he remembers that hotel windows do not open in Las Vegas, and therefore they must have locked Doug on the roof as a prank. Rushing back to Caesars Palace, they find him, heavily sunburned, with less than four hours before the wedding. Stu finds Jade before they leave to tell her that he can't stay married to her, but promises to come back the following weekend to see what develops between them. Stu also learns he lost his tooth because Alan bet him that he wasn't a good enough dentist to pull out his own tooth. Doug discovers he has $80,000 worth of casino chips in his pockets as they rush home and make it to the wedding. Phil goes back to his family, while Stu breaks up with his girlfriend.

As the reception wedding ends, the four friends reflect on their trip and express their desire to remember everything they did during the lost hours. When Alan discovers a camera they had with them depicting most of the outrageous events of their forgotten night, the four agree to look at the pictures exactly one time before destroying the evidence.

Cast

Helms at a premiere for the film

• Bradley Cooper as Phil Wenneck, a schoolteacher and best friend of the groom
• Ed Helms as Stu Price, a dentist and friend of the groom
• Zach Galifianakis as Alan Garner, the soon to be brother-in-law of the groom
• Justin Bartha as Doug Billings, the groom
• Heather Graham as Jade, a stripper
• Sasha Barrese as Tracy Garner, the bride
• Rachael Harris as Melissa, Stu's girlfriend. Harris previously co-starred with Helms on the Daily Show.
• Jeffrey Tambor as Sid Garner, father of the bride
• Ken Jeong as Leslie Chow
• Mike Tyson as Himself
• Mike Epps as Black Doug
• Rob Riggle as Officer Franklin
• Bryan Callen as Eddie Palermo, owner of the Wedding Chapel
• Mike Vallely as Tuxedo Delivery Man
• Todd Phillips as Mr. Creepy (cameo in the elevator with a woman)
• Carrot Top as Himself (cameo in photo slide show)
• Wayne Newton as Himself (cameo in photo slide show)

Production

"I think part of what’s special about this movie is that none of the comedy comes from the characters being clever, like you see in a lot of sitcoms or movies, where the characters actually have a funny sense of humor. That’s not the case in this movie. So as an actor, you can really play the intensity and gravity and seriousness of the moment, and just rely on the circumstances being funny. The joke is kind of the situation you’re in, or the way you’re reacting to something, as opposed to the characters just saying something witty."

Ed Helms

Writing

The plot was reportedly inspired by a real-life event that happened to Tripp Vinson, a producer friend of The Hangover executive producer Chris Bender. Vinson had gone missing from his own Las Vegas bachelor party, blacking out and waking up "in a strip club being threatened with a very, very large bill [he] was supposed to pay".

The script started as a Vegas bachelor party gone wrong written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, but was substantially rewritten by Jeremy Garelick and director Todd Phillips, who added Mike Tyson and his tiger, the baby, and the police cruiser. However, the Writers Guild of America did not permit their work to be credited due to what Phillips described as an "insane" and "nebulous" set of rules.

Filming

Fifteen days of filming occurred in Nevada. The fictitious "Best Little Wedding Chapel" was filmed at 1236 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Actors Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Bradley Cooper were all casual acquaintances before The Hangover was filmed, which Helms said he believed helped in establishing a rapport and chemistry between their characters. Helms credited director and producer Todd Phillips for "bringing together three guys who are really different, but really appreciate each other's humor and sensibilities". Helms also said the fact that the story of the three characters growing closer and bonding informed the friendship between the three actors: "As you spend 14 hours a day together for three months, you see a lot of sides of somebody. We went through the wringer together, and that shared experience really made us genuine buddies."

Helms said filming The Hangover was more physically demanding than any other role he had done, and that he lost eight pounds while making the film. He said the most difficult day of shooting was the scene when Mr. Chow rams his car and attacks the main characters, which Helms said required many takes and was very painful, such as when a few of the punches and kicks accidentally landed and when his knees and shins were hurt while being pulled out of a window. Helms's missing tooth was not created with prosthetics or visual effects, but is naturally occurring: Helms never had an adult incisor grow, and got a dental implant as a teenager which was removed for filming.

Regarding the explicit shots in the final photo slide show in which his character is seen receiving fellatio in an elevator, actor Zach Galifianakis confirmed that a prosthesis was used for the scene, and that he had been more embarrassed than anyone else during the creation of the shot. "You would think that I wouldn't be the one who was embarrassed; I was extremely embarrassed. I really didn't even want it in there. I offered Todd's assistant a lot of money to convince him to take it out of the movie. I did. But it made it in there."

A few of the driving scenes were filmed along a stretch of California Interstate 210, near the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino.

Us Weekly reported that Lindsay Lohan turned down the role of Jade, which eventually went to Heather Graham, because the screenplay "had no potential". The article claimed that Lohan's agent "tried hard to get Phillips to consider her, and when he finally agreed, Lindsay said she didn't like the script".

Release

Marketing

The film had a marketing budget of $40 million.

Box office

The Hangover proved to be very successful financially. On its first day of release, the film drew an estimated $16.5 million on approximately 4,500 screens at 3,269 sites, beating out the big budgeted Land of the Lost — the other major new release of the weekend — for first day take. Although initial studio projections had the Disney/Pixar film Up holding on to the #1 slot for a second consecutive weekend, final revised figures, bolstered by a surprisingly strong Sunday showing, ultimately had The Hangover finishing first for the weekend with $45 million, narrowly edging out Up for the top spot, and more than doubling the take of Land of the Lost, which finished third with $18.8 million. The film beat even Warner Bros. own expectations — which had anticipated it would finish third behind Up and Land of the Lost — benefiting from positive word-of-mouth and critical praise, and a generally negative buzz for Land of the Lost.

Since its release, the film has earned $257 million domestically and $113 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $370 million, making it the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever in the U.S., surpassing a record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop for almost 25 years.

Critical reception

The Hangover has received primarily positive reviews. It holds a 79% positive response rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 187 professional reviews, with the consensus that "with a clever script and hilarious interplay among the cast, The Hangover nails just the right tone of raunchy humor, and the non-stop laughs overshadow any flaw." Film critic Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars out of four, stating "Now this is what I'm talkin' about. The Hangover is a funny movie, flat out, all the way through. Its setup is funny. Every situation is funny. Most of the dialogue is funny almost line by line."

Although widely critically praised, many critics have noted the weak character development, especially in its female characters. Ebert despite his praise mentions "I won't go so far as to describe it as a character study" but that the film is more than the sum of its parts that may at first seem a little generic or cliched, many other films such as Very Bad Things having explored the idea of a weekend in Vegas gone wrong. Critics have complained about racial stereotyping, in particular the Asian gangster.

Sequel

Before the release of the film, Entertainment Weekly revealed that Warner Bros. is already planning a sequel for the film. Variety later reported in July 2009 that production on The Hangover 2 will begin in October 2010 for a Memorial Day weekend 2011 release, following the same production schedule used for the first film.

External links

• Official website
• The Hangover at IMDb
• The Hangover at Metacritic
• The Hangover at Box Office Mojo
• The Hangover at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Hangover at AllMovie