The Hangover 3 - Film Review

*CAUTION: This review contains spoilers for The Hangover 3. If you haven't seen it and wish to do so, proceed with caution.*

How many sequels is a sequel too many?

In an age where film franchises are endlessly spun-out to compensate for the lack of original ideas, there's the increasing number of films being made that don't really need to be.

The Hangover is a case in point. The first film, when it landed in 2009, when a stone cold success. It had many funny lines, it introduced a wealth of funny characters in the most extreme example of a relatable situation - stag party hangover - and it was well plotted.

Then came The Hangover 2. A commercial success it may well have been, but the film was a hollow mess. It felt like a cynical re-tread of the path, with the same plot but in a different city (Bangkok as opposed to Las Vegas) and nowhere near as funny.

A cynic may say this decision was built more on financial rather than creative decisions but, in any case, the 3rd film is now upon us. The prospects of The Hangover 4 seem remote at best - the film advertising is touting this as the end of the trilogy.

So, a run through of one final adventure. Question is - have they rediscovered what made them funny or was that a memory the creators can barely remember?

This film takes a rather interesting and quite ballsy tack - to ignore the pretence of being a comedy. It adopts presence of a mixture of ideas. Drug intervention, gangster film, a heist plot as complex as the Ocean's 11 film and various twists all revolving around two central characters.

This film starts not in a debauchery-filled hotel room or at a wedding missing guests embroiled in heists. Instead, it begins in a Thai prison where the film tries a little Shawshank Redemption.

Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) is one of the main driving roles in the film. This is also a bold move, given he is a fringe character yet gets the most screen time and arguably the driving force. It's bold because he is a ball of lunacy and not one of the main Wolf Pack. He is also a more divisive figure. After all, Asian jokes get a wee bit tedious after a while, as anyone who has sat through the deteriorating-in-quality Family Guy will tell you.

Elsewhere, the rest of the group is concerned about Alan (Zach Galifianakis), who buys a giraffe and then unwittingly decapitates it, causing the closure of a freeway. This is painfully badly placed and it feels like this could be a bad omen.

The film takes a different turn when Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Doug (Justin Bartha) arrive to try to help him. They convince him to check into an Arizona rehab centre, only to get crashed off the road by gangsters on the way there.

Head of the gangsters, which includes the other Doug from the first movie, is Marshall (John Goodman). He knows this group of oddballs is the link to Chow, who stole $21million in gold bars from him shortly after the events of the first movie.

A clearly angry Marshall duly takes Doug as collateral - thereby keeping him out of the film for more than a handful of scenes yet again - while giving the others 3 days to hand him Chow.

This soon leads to a trip via Tijuana to a Mexican villa, with Chow picked up along the way via a truly bizarre cover version of Hurt and some amusing concept gags involving security systems. These sequences in the villa are among the funniest in the film, with Jeong's madcap lunacy working well in tandem with Helms' exasperation.

After this, in the Mexican villa, they retrieve what they think is the $21million Chow stole. Instead, it's the other $21million from the original $42million haul, meaning Chow now has the lot.

This increases the tension, which duly leads to the return where this all began - viva Las Vegas, Nevada.

The shots here are, for a comedy, beautifully shot. It's easy to take good shots of the oasis in the desert but this feels like a true widescreen-epic for the beautiful panoramas of the Strip.

There's a clever element that takes hold here as it is a hangover of The Hangover. Various elements from the first film are tied up here, ranging from a re-introduction of Heather Graham's character and the baby that inexplicably wound up in their hotel room, to a raid on the same casino, to closure in the deserts outside Vegas.

It's a clever concept and it would make more sense as a more drama/thriller concept. However, as a comedy it feels like its missing its chances to make humour out of the situation. There are some zingers and some amusing sight-gags, but it's not full on rolling-in-the-aisles funny.

Despite this, there is enough to keep people entertained. It flows very well and there are a good few lines. But it is better to go in with lower expectations. If you're expected a knockout string-of-humour comedy based on not knowing what you did the night before, go rent the first movie.

Saying that, this sequel does not really feel that much like a sequel too far. If anything, it feels like the sequel they should have made when they did the Hangover 2 back in 2011. This is especially true when a knockout re-doing of the original Hangover sequence emerges at the end of the film, which has inspired some for a possible Hangover 4. Now that would be a sequel too far...

If this is the end, it's definitely done the franchise more justice than the last film. It also feels more like a finale, and this should put the lid on any future escapades. That is probably for the best at a film which will not be winning Oscars, but not any Razzies ever.

3/5