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Wednesday, May 29, 2013
www.elvaq.com
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT o o
Review
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‘The Hangover Part III’ Delivers an Actual Hangover By Monica Terada
EL VAQUERO STAFF WRITER
“T
he Hangover Part III” is a clear example of how modern society’s movie viewing audience has become inversely proportional to the quality of the comedy. The masses have spoken, and they want dementia, ineptitude and ludicrousness. A fulfilling combination for the not so demanding minds of tomorrow. Although generalizations are impolite, and used by those deemed “unrefined,” their basis comes from somewhere (a notion, an observed pattern in human behavior or several similar occurrences), and somewhere is not always so far. That is because they refer to the general public. There are exceptions of course, but exceptions are not a part of the masses. The British have their sarcasm and wit; the French enjoy
their dark humor and Brazilian comedy is unashamedly vulgar. When looking at the whole picture, these generalizations are pretty accurate. That being said, American comedy is dumb, an ignorant generalization—but not exactly empty in meaning or supporting examples. “All I feed them is cocaine and chicken,” said Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), when attempting to explain why his chicken display such a frantically agitated state of being. A cannibalistic coke sniffing chicken trained to kill is not funny — it’s poor taste in comedy. “The Hangover Part III” resumes itself to a waste of time. The “wolfpack,” Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Alan (Zach Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha), are idiots and that’s the movie. Their idiocy is illustrated in a trip to hunt down Chow, the $21 billion thief, and is extended all
the way to Mexico then back to Las Vegas, while reverberating strongly within the walls of Glendale’s Pacific Theaters. A giraffe loses its head along the way, the audience laughs. An elderly woman in a power scooter is denied food by her daughter, the audience laughs even louder. Chow loves cocaine and announces it’s what he feeds his fighting pet chicken, the audience explodes in laughter. In summary, animal cruelty and showing disrespect to elders is hilarious. Todd Phillips, writer and director of all three movies in the series, is clearly not the problem in this whole situation as he’s the one making all the green from these cheap laughs. The script is mediocre at best and the acting a strong representation of all that is cliché in the art of American comedy. Drugs being used to depict funny pranks, people’s heads getting smashed against walls, against
Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers
STILL FRIENDS: Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms return for “The Hangover Part III.”
windows, against each other and a pack of airheads running around in circles. With gay related topics making the front page of the newspaper almost every week, with the country going through a dramatic transformation toward gay rights and acceptance, with the world evolving every day due to globalization, technology
and science, you would think the typical heterosexual joke towards gays would cease to be funny after the 789th time. It doesn’t however and Phillips got paid to prove it.
Monica Terada can be reached at monicaterada@gmail.com