Back in 2009, we were given a brilliant, fresh comedy in the form of "The Hangover" directed by Todd Phillips who has had previous credits on such films as Old School, Starsky & Hutch and Road Trip. Before the first installment of The Hangover, I was never particularly fond of Todd Phillips' work. Although I did enjoy Starsky & Hutch back in the day when I first saw it, I was not overly impressed with the other films he had directed. That's why The Hangover was so refreshing for me; it caught me off guard completely and remains one of my favourite comedies of the 00's decade for sure. Now after an extremely disappointing sequel 2 years ago, how does this one fair?
I'll begin by saying that this should never have been a franchise. It was one of those films that was that innovative and well executed that it worked perfectly as a stand alone film like it was intended. It was only the status that it earned, as well as the box office return achieving the highest grossing R rated comedy that pursued the team to work on a sequel. I did not like Part II like many others due to its lack of creativity and just being a complete rehash of the previous installment. When I heard that after this they were then going to finalize it by making the franchise a trilogy, I in no way was pleased about this. I truly believed that they couldn't come up with something that was going to satisfy me at all, let alone live up to the original. After seeing the third and final installment, my concerns were confirmed.
One thing I will give the writers credit for is that they took a different route with the third part. They'd obviously learnt from their mistakes in terms of the story from Part II and tried to completely revamp the narrative that this one would follow. I can at least give them some admiration for this because it certainly was different to what we've seen in this franchise and I can appreciate that they tried to spice things up. Sadly, it lacks the true feel of a Hangover film for me. As much as all of the references, revisits and returning characters, there was no hangover for a start which begs the question of why is it called 'The Hangover then?! Despite my relief of it not being the same old same old, they didn't incorporate enough of what made the first film so good into this one which meant that it just didn't sit right with me and right off the bat meant that I wasn't going to enjoy it as much because of that.
Now the main factor that seemingly tests whether the film is any good or not, is how funny/not funny it is. For me, the novelty has just completely worn off and honestly I hardly laughed at all. I found myself in the same situation as the previous film in that I just didn't really care for what was going on because I really didn't want to see these characters returning. For the first half of this film, there was some moments which I did laugh out loud so I can't say that it completely flopped in that respect but as for the second half; that's where it truly failed. So many jokes felt crammed in and out of place that I literally found it uncomfortable sitting there watching the film. For general audiences, I'm sure this will be a blast because I know a lot of people that liked the second Hangover and this one seems to be more associated in the humour department with the second film than the first.
Something I honestly found forced and done extremely over the limit was the direction the film took. Once all of the mayhem ensues and the wolf pack is on the hunt for Chow, they track him down where they end up finding him in Vegas. This was Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin's way of trying to bring the trilogy 'full circle' as well as trying to bring that spirit that the original had going for. Sadly, it just didn't work on any level for me and I was constantly sat there rolling my eyes when all of the references were being shoe horned in. Of course, I half expected this to happen considering that this is the allegedly final film and that Todd Phillips wants to try and recreate that smooth flow and hysterical comedy that The Hangover had going for it. A major example of this is that they revisited the stripper's house who Stu had drunkenly married two films ago. It didn't serve a purpose to help solve the narrative and the problems that the characters were facing; it was just a clear revisit to the first film's events and a character to try and gain cheap laughs.
One thing that I thought was completely ludicrous was that they had Alan take a transition in personality from The Hangover Part II to this one. When we are re-introduced to his character at the beginning of the film, we can clearly see a change that he has undertaken and a poor excuse of this was that he hadn't been taking the medication prescribed to him for six months. I just felt like this was a bad way to try and make things different to the previous two films and have Alan still be the front and centre of the show without it being a rehash of the character we've already seen. He was just an obnoxious, stuck up and quite frankly annoying character that I couldn't stand at times. He was one of the reasons why the first film was so great, I can't think of a character that was in any way shape or form similar to how he was. His performance was great and clearly all of the best writing went into his character, making him the main attraction to countless rewatches of the film especially for myself. This film just throws all likability for him out of the window, meaning that there really is no appeal in this film at all.
Overall, The Hangover Part III probably lived up to what I was expecting it to be. From the trailers and early reviews that came in, my thoughts were that this just never should have happened. After watching it, I stick with the exact same mindset and I will forever only think of The Hangover as a one off, brilliantly executed stand alone film that didn't need or have any sequels to follow. What I will add though is that for all of its flaws and downfalls, I still just about enjoyed this one a bit more because I can appreciate that it tried to do something different rather than just completely rehashing the story and even jokes from the first film like Part II did.
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