Waking Up in Vegas

No matter what you think, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis aren’t the stars of Todd (Old School) Phillips’s hilarious The Hangover – debauchery is.

The movie follows the misadventures of a trio of guys who take their friend Doug (National Treasure’s Justin Bartha) to Las Vegas two days before his wedding, and then proceed to lose him after the first night of bachelor-partying – a night they’ll never forget.

Strike that: It’s a night they’ve forgotten all about.

When Phil (He’s Just Not That Into You’s Cooper), Stu (TV’s The Office’s Helms), and Alan (Galifianakis, a.k.a. comedy’s next It Boy, trust me) wake up the next morning, they don’t know anything other than their heads hurt.

The last thing they remember is standing on the roof of Caesars Palace, drinking shots of Jäger.

They’re back in their $4,200-a-night suite, which is now beyond-trashed. There’s a tiger in the bathroom, a chicken roaming around, and a crying baby in a closet. One of them appears to have been in the ER, another is missing a tooth and – Vegas, baby! – hitched, and the other now has a pierced belly button.

And Doug is nowhere to be found.

With no clue as to what transpired and little time to spare, Phil, Stu, and Alan must shake the glitter of their clothes and retrace their hazy steps and so they can figure out where it all went downhill, and hopefully find and get their friend back to L.A. in time to walk down the aisle.

Their quest gives The Hangover its strong spine, which it needs to sustain the very long, very amusing day ahead, which includes a fact-finding visit to a wedding chapel, a encounter with a small, yet very mean Chinese mobster, a sweet stripper played by Heather Graham, an interview with an ER doctor, and an tête-à-tête with Mike Tyson.

In the words of Katy Perry, “That’s what you get for waking up in Vegas.”

The Hangover is a must-see. It’s boys being boys, no-apologies fun. It’s great to see Cooper leading a movie, and I can’t wait to see him in something that’s all his own (although at a screening of the movie in Miami Beach last month he said he “can’t talk about” whether that something will be the Green Lantern movie). And Galifianakis is a scene-stealer if I ever saw one, and I sooo want to hang out with him.

If you enjoy this, you must be sure to rent the underwatched-at-the-theaters Observe and Report. Both movies are oh-so-wrong in the best ways.

My Rating ****

Photo: Warner Bros.