There's something fundamentally wrong with a film when we root for some of the main characters getting killed or seriously injured (unless it's Jackass, in which case we may get some satisfaction from seeing them maimed time and time again). In the case of The Hangover Part III, there are two individuals in particular that inspire feelings of sadism in the viewer, and it is truly unfortunate as much harm doesn't come to them as we may hope.
The 2009 buddy movie The Hangover set a bar neither of its sequels could live up to. On the contrary, The Hangover Part II, set mostly in the seedy underworld of Bangkok at night, was a travesty at times so lewd and ludicrous it was clearly aiming to shock rather than entertain.
If we can permit ourselves to hope, and going by a drawn-out scene at the end of the film in which we are led to believe the 42-year-old child has become a 42-year-old man, this will be the final chapter in a trilogy that has had a constant hangover since its infancy.
Two of the worst elements of the previous film headline this latest film and irredeemably wreck the entertainment value: the aforementioned 42-year-old child, Allen (a stunningly annoying Zach Galifianakis), and his best friend, the high-pitched supercriminal Leslie Chow.
Unlike the first two installments, in which the "Wolf Pack," a group of four friends, need to piece their lives back together after a party the night before a big wedding goes wrong and they wake up with amnesia, there is no morning-after this time around; instead, there is only a very simple sequence of events that lead the boys to Tijuana and Las Vegas in search of some gold bars.
In the film's opening moments, we see Allen, who is still living with his elderly parents, has nothing better to do than buy a giraffe. This seems to be as easy as going down to the pet store and picking one out to take home. He takes the animal on the road home, passing under many overpasses until eventually he hits one that is not high enough, and it cuts the giraffe's head clean off, causing a major pileup on the road. But we shouldn't feel too bad for the giraffe, because the CGI is appalling.
As if that is not enough, in the following scene, Allen's father explains to him that he has to change his ways and become a responsible adult. Allen ignores his father by putting on his headphones, but the stress is too much for the old man who has a heart attack and dies within earshot of his son, who doesn't notice him.
If you were not already familiar with the antics of this immature man-child, these two scenes pretty much shape our perception of him as a self-obsessed ignoramus who has no ambition, no drive and evokes no sympathy from us. It is a character that needs work, but the screenwriters obviously considered him a lost cause nonetheless worthy of being included in most of the film.
When John Goodman appears on the scene, we are about to forgive the film its sad characters drifting unmoored toward an uncertain future. He is looking for his gold bars to the value of $21 million, which their crazy friend from Thailand, Leslie Chow, has stolen. He demands they find Chow, and as ransom he keeps one of them, Doug (Justin Bartha, who strangely was also absent from most of Part II). This scene takes place on a wind farm in the middle of the desert - a very appropriate metaphor for this production that merely churns a void past us at different speeds.
Chow, as he has done before, behaves in a way that has us fearing he might rape the boys in their sleep. Also, instead of a bromance, Allen's one-sided moments of admiration of Phil (Bradley Cooper) verge on the creepy, which doesn't help him develop relationships with his fellow characters or the audience.
By the time Allen finally meets someone who seems to get him, we don't care, because it seems his immaturity has no end. This person, though very different, is also fat and short like him, which in the world of one-dimensional entertainment qualifies as solid. Perhaps it is no accident the actress playing the part is Melissa McCarthy, who recently starred in the awful The Identity Thief, in a similar capacity.
Thank goodness this is the end of the series, because it couldn't possibly have sustained another incarnation. This film takes some of the worst parts of the previous two films and throws them together without any consideration for character arc - except as an afterthought - or entertainment. There is not a single laugh to be had in this film, and even the title is wholly irrelevant except as a sad reminder of better days in times gone by.
