If you're going into "The Hangover Part II" expecting something brand new fuh' 'dat ass (as Coolio might say), you might be disappointed.
More like Monty Python's famed "...and now for something completely different." These guys aren't straying from their wheelhouse.
"Part II" picks up some time after the first. This time, Stu (Ed Helms) is the prospective groom, set to marry a young Thai hottie (Jamie Chung), who wants to get married in her native land. Stu — being the devoted, easygoing guy he is — says yes and drags Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) with him.
Oh, and Doug pleads ... begs, in fact, for him to include Alan (Zach Galifianakis). Seems he's been holed up in his bedroom at his parents' house, living off the memories of the Wolfpack.
Stu relents (otherwise we wouldn't have a movie, right?), but vehemently declines a bachelor party, just to be safe.
Of course, that doesn't stop them from waking up, hungover and disoriented, on the floor of a scuzzy Bangkok hotel room with a finger on the table, a monkey in the bathroom and the bride's little brother, Teddy (Mason Lee), missing.
You know the rest. The boys have to retrace the steps of their debauchery, figure out where Teddy is and get to the church on time.
Most everything is the same about this film as the last. Things go from screwed up to full-on insanity. Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) is back, though I think I'll leave for you to experience the circumstances surrounding his arrival.
But as I was saying. Beat for beat, "The Hangover Part II" is almost identical to "The Hangover," except with, you know, different things happening. It opens with a panicked phone call. Ed Helms sings a mid-film song. We find out the culprit at around the same time. We run into certain characters at the same time (excepting one), and we discover the solution to the mystery at the same time.
As a result, it's experiencing those situations that makes the movie worthwhile. Keeping that in mind, I'll try to spoil as little as possible.
Let's talk about the bad: Being the sequel, and laid out almost identically to its predecessor, it's not too tough to figure out the film's "mystery."
To make up for this, director Todd Phillips throws a little curve at us, which is honestly the only sequence I didn't see coming (though I won't really say more than that).
It also would have been nice to see Doug actually join the Wolfpack, but he's instead relegated to the sidelines, checking in by phone with the guys and providing moral support.
But what's there does garner laughs, and the boys have just as much chemistry as they did the last go-round. Bradley Cooper again looks like a legit movie star, and Ed Helms really steps up his game. Galifianakis is playing the same character for the third or fourth time in a row, and though the cracks are starting to show in his act, he still more or less delivers. Be watching for a fitting (though I assume totally coincidental) homage to a recently deceased celebrity.
"The Hangover Part II" is solid popcorn fare, comfort food, whatever you want to call it. It isn't wildly imaginative, brings little if nothing new to the table, and is really more of the same. But that same was awesome a couple of years ago. and is still pretty darn good now.