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*½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
starring
Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, John Goodman
screenplay
by Todd Phillips & Craig Mazin
directed
by Todd Phillips
by
Angelo Muredda When Project X
spilled forth from its amniotic
septic tank last spring, I
read it as a prime example of a
producer-driven form of auteurism pioneered by Judd Apatow. That
found-footage
chronicle of a house party-turned-apocalypse, I suggested, was a
monument to
producer Todd Phillips's equally noxious Hangover
series, where the same Dionysian impulses and
deep-seated hatred of the different–whether female, trans, queer, or
disabled–were championed by a trio of middle-aged men. What a
difference a
year makes. If Project
X was a brand
consolidator and The
Hangover Part II
was a morbidly curious recalibration of its predecessor, displacing
Phillips's
demonic impulses and scarcely controlled misogynist rage from Bradley
Cooper's
Phil to Ed Helms's Stu, Part
III is an actors'
contract negotiation sputtered to life. Since the previous instalment,
Cooper has
become a respectable leading man and Oscar nominee and Helms has been
savaged
for the degeneration of his irritating Andy Bernard character on "The
Office", while co-star Ken Jeong's fortunes have inexplicably risen.
Consequently, gone now are the days of Phil's "Paging Doctor Faggot,"
along with Stu's loveable dude-rage and the Wolfpack's infinite jokes
about Mr.
Chow's shrunken Asian manhood. In their place is a surprisingly
neutered, if
inarguably more ethical, product with very few laughs and no reason for
being.
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Much as he
presents as someone who couldn't care less about his movies' critical
reception,
Phillips has clearly taken some of the slams against Part II
to heart. After filching every
detail of the original film's structure for the first sequel, he's now
more or
less abandoned the titular conceit, keeping the road-movie dynamics and
sidelining of
Justin Bartha's useless Doug but ditching the retrospective detective
narrative
and get-to-the-wedding finale for something more straightforward. This
time,
the gang reassembles to intervene in the mental well-being of Alan
(Zach
Galifianakis), off his meds and broken up about the recent death of his
father
(Jeffrey Tambor). Having reluctantly agreed to drive Alan to a clinic,
the
Wolfpack plus Doug gets held up by Marshall (John Goodman), a
blustering coke
dealer who's had his life's savings in gold pinched by the recently
jail-broken
Leslie Chow (Jeong). With Doug as his hostage–seriously, would anyone
mind if he
disappeared for good this time?–Marshall sends the Wolfpack off to
collect his
enemy, who unsurprisingly eventually flees to Las Vegas, the site of the gang's
inaugural hangover.
From Chow's
dank prison escape over the credits to the men's listless search for
him at
Caesar's Palace, there's an oddly fatalistic air that hangs over each
major set-piece,
which is only intensified by a repeated and unexplained violence
against animals just barely played for laughs. The argument of the
series has always been that
men find their latent spirit animals only when their basic survival
instincts
kick in, but nobody seems to be having a revelatory or even a very good
time
here–including Chow, whose queerness and radical sexuality have been
safely
holstered this time out. (At the very least, this means fewer racist
and
homophobic dick jokes, though one is still too many.) The most one can
say in
defense of this mirthlessness is that the film settles into a mildly
pleasant
melancholy in the last act, as Alan, always the purest character and
lone
source of grace notes, finally gets to come of age.
As for Phillips, there's something to be said for his spatial
logic and compositional sense in the heist and chase sequences: the
only
moments that really work. The Hangover movies
have never looked as ugly as they've
sounded, and you have to give credit to series DP Lawrence Sher for his
widescreen vistas and contrastive palette; as flatly as Goodman's
entrance is
written, there's clear visual intelligence in the way his height
advantage over
the Wolfpack is erased by the dwarfing wind turbines of Tehachapi,
California.
One leaves this dead franchise hoping Phillips refocuses his energies
from
joyless comedy to action, becoming the coherent man's answer to Michael
Bay.
THE
BLU-RAY DISC
by
Bill Chambers Warner brings The Hangover Part
III
to Blu-ray in a status quo 2.40:1, 1080p presentation. It might even
look the
best of the three on the format, lacking the slightly electronic patina
of the
first film's transfer and the slight dimness of the second's. DP and
franchise
MVP Lawrence Sher unifies the disparate aesthetics of the movie's
prequels with a kind of perpetual magic-hour that adapts beautifully to small-screen HiDef.
Although apparently only the interiors were photographed digitally
(with the rest being shot in Super35), some dusky exteriors, like the
hilltop overlooking a twinkly
Vegas in the climax, have a terrifically broad latitude to rival post-film Michael
Mann,
without any of the attendant noise. (Also, who knows what constitutes
"interior" and "exterior" on a production that rebuilt the
Caesar's Palace façade on a greenscreen soundstage.) It looks
luxurious, clean
but not noise-reduced, sharp but not processed, and never not
cinematic; a scrim of fine grain throughout perhaps serves to equalize
the digital and the photochemical. The
only time the image falters is during moments of heavy compositing,
such as the comparatively soft-focused giraffe sequence. Equally dynamic, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA track seems to have been
recorded a
little louder than most Warner discs, which hammers
home the
unusual attention to immersion put into this "comedy" mix–care that is
evident from the opening prison riot. Music manages to be both
crystal clear and diegetically persuasive where applicable, while bass
is at
least as potent as it is on the upcoming Blu-ray release of Pacific
Rim. The occasional thrown voice lands in the rear channels with impressive
transparency.
Divided arbitrarily into "behind the
scenes" and "featurettes," extras launch with "Replacing
Zach: The Secret Auditions" (6 mins., HD), in which ubiquitous black
holes
of comedy like Rachael Harris, Jason Sudeikis (billed oddly fawningly
as
"movie star"), and Rob Riggle don fake beards and read Alan's most
profane
lines from the script. It's stupid. "The Wolfpack's Wildest Stunts"
(5 mins., HD) is one of only two non-tongue-in-cheek pieces, showing
how they
ran a zipline across five or six casinos, dropped various skydivers
from
helicopters, and took control of the Bellagio fountains for Chow's
hang-glide
over Las Vegas. And that, friends, is why The Hangover Part
III cost
$70M more than the original. "Zach Galifianakis: In His Own Words" (3
mins., HD) cobbles together the uneven wisecracks from Galifianakis's
talking
head that didn't make it into the other segments, and "Pushing
the Limits" (4 mins., HD) addresses the return of Grant Holmquist–one
of eight
kids who played Baby Tyler in The Hangover,
according to a rare
soundbite from Bradley Cooper–as well as PETA calling the producers
about the
giraffe beheading. "Inside Focus: The Real Chow" (5 mins., HD) is an
excruciating thing that pretends Chow is real and Ken Jeong merely
his
"beard." Thanks again, Apatow. Lastly, "Action Mash-Up" (1
min., HD) is another one of those inexplicable montages devoted to every
action
beat. A two-minute block of three "Extended Scenes" (2 mins., HD)
contains nothing noteworthy while the lengthy "Outtakes" reel (8
mins., HD) features lots of throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks
improv, along with Ed Helms losing an insult battle when Galifianakis breaks character. A trailer for We're the
Millers cues
up on startup; DVD and Ultraviolet copies of the film are bundled with
the BD.
