WORLD TOUR Day 49 - Thailand
BEFORE: I realize I'm all over the place thematically, but that's because most everything's organized by geography, and creating the path leading around the world is still working solidly. Linking actors from "Kung Fu Panda 2", Seth Rogen was also in Monsters vs. Aliens" with Ed Helms (last seen in "Cedar Rapids").
THE PLOT: Two years after the bachelor party in Las Vegas, Phil, Stu, Alan, and Doug jet to Thailand for Stu's wedding. Stu's plan for a subdued pre-wedding brunch, however, goes seriously awry.
AFTER: Much like the first film in this series, things go wrong. Which is an understatement, because nearly everything goes wrong. And as in the first film, they have to travel around town and retrace their steps from the night before, only the difficulty is amped up by moving the locale from Las Vegas to Bangkok, Thailand. In addition to the language barrier (though everyone here seems to speak at least broken English), they've got to deal with a much rougher city - Vegas is so family-friendly these days anyway.
The only other difference is which character's wedding is getting disrupted, and which character the "wolfpack" is looking for, but aside from that, this is almost a re-tread of the first film. Don't say I didn't warn you. People paid to see the same storyline again, so they've only got themselves to blame when "The Hangover Part III" hits theaters, and they wake up in a tenement building in the Bronx after a drug-fueled night that weaved through Times Square, Spanish Harlem and the Meatpacking District (whose name has another meaning after dark - oh yeah, I went there).
If you can believe that the same far-fetched scenario happened AGAIN without calculating the odds against it, you may enjoy this one - I mostly did, but I'm giving it the exact same score as the first film, though I probably should deduct a point for repetition. Watch through the entire end credits, which explain a lot, and show you probably more than you ever thought you'd see on film.
If you find that you have a set of friends that cause you to have several occasions where you wake up in a room with no knowledge of the obviously dangerous activies of the night before, I do implore you to find yourself some better (and safer) friends. I freely admit that I have attended a few beer events where I'm not quite sure how I got home afterwards, but I'm pretty sure nothing akin to the events in this film happened to me.
There's a school of thought that says that you won't engage in any behavior when drunk or high that you wouldn't do when sober, and I tend to agree with that. One's moral code doesn't necessarily go out the window when intoxicated, but of course the movie sets out to portray an extreme example in the name of comedy. Still, what does it say about this trio of adventurers, that the alcohol + drugs bring out their inner demons, who seem to have agendas of their own?
NITPICK POINT: Let's get real for a second here. These guys fly to Thailand and are tired and jet-lagged. (OK, maybe they slept for the entire 15-hour plane trip, but still...) Am I to believe they hit upon the magical combination of alcohol and drugs that would not only give them superhuman energy AND endurance, lower their inhibitions, and keep them relatively cognizant BUT also completely wipe their memories of the night's events? And that the effects would be identical on three or four different people with different body-types?
Also starring Bradley Cooper (last seen in "The A-Team"), Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "It's Kind of a Funny Story"), Justin Bartha (last seen in "New York, I Love You"), Ken Jeong (last heard in "Despicable Me"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Win Win"), with cameos from Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Paul"), and Mike Tyson (again?)
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 1,191 miles / 1,917 km (Chengdu, China to Bangkok, Thailand)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 23,401 miles / 37,663 km
RATING: 6 out of 10 marshmallows
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