When the Cheshire emerges...

I've only just realised I was unable to put up last week's review with everything Eurovision in my face. It will be posted tomorrow night.

The Hangover Part III (MA 15+)

A HANGOVER: feeling like a train travelling at 150km/h has hit your head. Really bad hangovers leave you practically immobile. Thankfully, the body recovers and you eventually return to yourself. In the case of the Wolfpack though, we know well and truly by now (if not after the first film) the rules never apply.

The third instalment of their story is akin to the final part of the hangover where you feel you've truly learned from your lesson and promise to never drink again. But for them, it's not before they've been dragged back into a state of limbo as Doug (Justin Bartha) once again finds himself a victim and consequence of the group's actions.

Doug, Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Stu (Ed Helms) and Phil (Bradley Cooper) are given an ultimatum by Marshall (John Goodman) to find Chow (Ken Jeong) after his escape from prison. Marshall takes Doug, leaving the other three to seek out trouble they never want to have to find.

Returning director Todd Phillips takes the boys out of the US to Tijuana, Mexico, and then full circle to Las Vegas. The return, like the film itself, presents itself as necessary rather than a reason to get excited. They're seasoned pros (for amateur dealing-with-kidnapper folk anyway); they have a job to do and they're over it before it begins.

Stu is bitter and wants Vegas burned to the ground. Phil decides he's the one to take charge of the situation. Alan is still as amazingly stupid as he ever was; someone who could now possibly be called one of cinema's biggest idiots. And Chow... well, he gets to do more in this instalment. We see a different side to him, but he's still the same crazed criminal.

A less carefree attitude than its predecessors makes for a trip not as comical and not as outrageous. Whether a reflection of the real grown-up attitudes (most of) the Wolfpack try to uphold or merely Phillips' and Craig Mazin's way of winding it down, we're given a less comedy/more action wrap-up that's fulfilling in its purpose but not executed as enticingly as it could have been.

Old characters return and new ones make their mark. There is a betrayal, a grown-up baby Carlos and a moment between Alan and pawn shop clerk Cassandra (Melissa McCarthy) to represent the weirdness of romance.

Of the Wolfpack, this is really Galifianakis' film. Alan is the last remaining bachelor, a 42-year-old man still sheltered and living at home. He still has social communication issues and being off his medication doesn't help his situation. But his set-in-stone ways begin to waver as he realises so very slowly how to change his attitude towards life.

The story arc doesn't sit well with that message. The first film told us people do crazy shit in Vegas and what happens there stays there, while the second was a near repeat in Thailand (with possibly worse consequences). To have a moral undertow to the final act may be acceptable in reflecting life, but it's not necessarily what the audience is after.

An afterthought to counter this at the film's end doesn't achieve anything in rectifying what we already know. The best has been done. Our hangover is long over.

Rating: 2.5/5

*Published in the Daily Liberal (Dubbo), Western Advocate (Bathurst), Parkes Champion Post and Midstate Observer (Orange) from Saturday 25/5/2013

MISSED THE LAST REVIEW? See what I thought of Star Trek Into Darkness.