Film Review With Sam Larner

Yet another new feature on the Painter's Chronicle Website!

Budding young journo Sam Larner reviews some of the recent successful film releases. This week starting with 'The Hangover'.

The Hangover

It seems that in the last few years we have been made to suffer seriously sub standard comedy movies. “Superbad”, “Rolemodels” and “Knocked Up” are all examples of these. Now I know that for many young people “The Hangover” is considered a great example of how a comedy should be made, unfortunately I’m not one of them.

It’s directed by Todd Philips whose previous films include Frat House and Starsky & Hutch, all fall into the category of stupid, “not amusing enough movies”. To get an idea of what Todd is “into” here is a list of the cameo appearances he has been involved in: “Foot lover on bus” and “Gangbang guy”, it’s not sounding great is it?

So onto the film. It starts with a group of guys who are visiting Las Vegas for their friends stag night. Lifted from the plot of “Bachelor Party” and not unlike “Dude Where’s my Car?” I am well aware that I will be in the significant minority in believing that “The Hangover” is anything other than brilliant, original comedy.

The problems are numerous, firstly most of the attempted humour revolves around a clearly mentally ill man. Now, I have nothing against this kind of humour, in my opinion if a joke makes me laugh it is fine, however this isn’t enough to hang a $36million film on. Secondly, it just isn’t funny, it swings madly between surrealistic humour, for example the scenes with the tiger and Mike Tyson and then it swings back to simple gross out humour for example the breastfeeding scene. You sense that at some points the film could veer off in a direction that would create interest but at each of these junctions Philips just pulls it back into Hollywood’s idea of a funny film. Lastly, the films treatment of women is truly deplorable and although Mike Tyson only has a small role in the film it seems like his misogynistic views were employed by the film makers.

I know it’s not particularly popular to “dis” “The Hangover” however I can’t lie to you, it’s a bad film. It’s not funny enough and I hope that when you’ve all woken up from the joint lobotomy you’ll realise that Las Vegas isn’t a great place, it’s the end of the world and any film that’s set there which follows the plot of other unfunny films such as “Road Trip” or “What Happens in Vegas” is seriously on the wrong road.

Before I go I’ll leave you with a piece of film trivia. The star of “Freaky Friday” and “Mean Girls”, Lindsay Lohan turned down this film on the basis that she didn’t feel the script had any substance. This is a film that Lohan thought was substandard and she would’ve got paid for it.

Thanks Sam, and we look forward to more reviews from you!