Hacker Cinema
The Hangover
2009 · Film · 100 min
Part of The Hangover Collection
Directed by Todd Phillips
When three friends finally come to after a raucous night of bachelor-party revelry, they find a baby in the closet and a tiger in the bathroom. But they can't seem to locate their best friend, Doug – who's supposed to be tying the knot. Launching a frantic search for Doug, the trio perseveres through a nasty hangover to try to make it to the church on time.
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29 comments on Hacker News
These are just my favorites, and in the order of which the popped into my mind.
- Office Space, 1999 (especially for people who work at offices) - The Matrix, 1999 - Fight Club, 1999 :)
Umm, what else? - Spirited Away, 2001 (and many others from Miyazaki) - Requiem for a Dream, 2000 (Very Heavy addiction-related film! I actually got watery eyes just by typing this, I've seen it too many times.) - Joker, 2019 - Full Metal Jacket, 1987 (and many others from Kubrick, such as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining) - Django Unchained, 2012 (and many others from Tarantino, at least Pulp Fiction) - Alien, 1979 - The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 - Saw, 2004
I made a bit longer list, so that I can share the link to my friends.
Actually there are many quirky ones which came to my mind, such as Borat, the South Park movie, Team America, Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!), Idiocracy and Hangover, but I wouldn't say these are in the must-see category. Actually I wouldn't even recommend these to most people, if I didn't know what kind of humor they like.
I think French people, especially younger ones, are much more open to the use of English than stereotypes suggest. My favorite example is the French name for the movie "The Hangover", which is "Very Bad Trip". Not "Very Bad Trip" translated into French, but the exact English.
Just because a movie looks better doesn’t mean it is a better movie. There has been trash made during all eras, but today is about volume, not quality, so finding the gems is much harder and frustrating.
Do we really need to have another movie about super heroes or another movie about rescuing some retiring tough guy’s kid from a bad guy? Or another movie that spends the first half rotating between character building scenes filled with silly, rote dialogue and no story line? Or another movie that takes an old, tired story and simply replaces the characters with a new set of characters intended to signal the importance of a particular demographic group? Or another Jurassic Park, Hangover, Rocky, Transformer, Terminator, Star Wars clone? Yawn.
Hollywood used to create comedy hit after hit.
These days studios are too worried about offending anyone. There haven’t been any truly funny comedies in almost a decade. Think about it.
Think back on the last really funny movie you saw in theaters. Was it maybe The Hangover?
Why do you think that the "pervy" elements of anime are disliked? Most American teen shows and movies have plenty of innuendo and women with tiny bikinis in compromising situations. Sex comedies like American Pie, National Lampoon, and the Hangover series aren't so different in the kind of humor that one finds in fan service moments.
FYI Bradley Cooper stars in the Hangover, now that we are sharing useless and obvious facts. The point is that those kind of irreverent movies were loved abroad so the current situation is not because the globalization of the audience, a thing which btw is 40 years old at the very least.
What?
The great American comedies are loved worldwide from the classics like the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello to the "modern" dumb movies like the Hangover or Superbad. The pull to milquetoast, harmless comedies come from INSIDE the US by the usual suspects.
A comedy like Borat can be made because it makes fun of the "right" people, a FSU country, Islam, Roma people, American conservatives, rednecks, etc, so it is New-York-Times readership approved. Keep the same script but change the demographics and you will get pages upon pages of harsh criticism all over the media.
Young people need to understand that there is always an ideologically war going and the powerful people push their worldview unto us.
I think I've probably watched 1000+ movies. I've tapered off as I got older (I'm in my 40s now) but at least one movie every 5 days seems like a low bar I would regularly hit.
What the author says is true, I tend to see common patterns and can often predict who's a secret villain by the first act or have a general idea of how the movie will end. At the same time, these clues are what make a movie compelling and provide subtle clues where the movie is going, so shouldn't be discounted as "tropes" or cheap. George RR Martin talks about ignoring fans who have correctly predicted what will later be revealed at the end, saying that instead of retconning or changing course, it's best to keep on and not be influenced by the (correct) predictions. The groundwork is laid and the foreshadowing gives active readers an excuse to engage with the material.
I can also say that many movies overuse tropes (time travel in sci-fi for example) but often, even with movies that are mediocre or bad, there's a gem of an idea. Sometimes it's a premise, sometimes is a character interaction, what have you, but that's what, in my opinion, people who get into this state should be looking for. It's a version of "strongmaning" an argument, but instead applying it to the movie you're watching.
Also, sometimes the pleasure is in seeing how the movie plays out, even if you know the ending beforehand. I've seen quite a few movies multiple times and often enjoy them more on subsequent viewings.
I'm pretty skeptical of the author touching on "Godfather", "Eyes Wide Shut" and "The Hangover" as it sounds like their taste is pretty immature. They touch on this with the mention of "Lost in Translation" being unrelatable but delving deeper, it might be that they like those movies for other more superficial reasons that might not be so predominant later on in their life. I'm also pretty critical of "not being surprised anymore". This means that they're either so cynical and jaded or they're not looking hard enough for movies. It's rare but surprises do happen and the lack of surprise on the author's part points, in my opinion, to an unjustified superiority complex.
A final point: The author touches on it but then abandons it. TV is the new media. TV has the ability to delve much deeper into plot arcs and character development. We're living in a golden age of television where there are some shows that rival and surpass the best movies out there in terms breadth, scope and depth. There will always be a place for movies but I think at this point it's the difference between a short story and a novel. There's only so much you can pack in a two hour limit (or 6 hours if you're part of a trilogy) whereas the 12-24+ hour limit for TV allows you the space to explore in more depth.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnXmNHubfs
Yawn, everyone always uses this film as a "prime" example. I don't even think it's true. This film (like Borat) was clearly satirical and the real targets of the jokes quite obvious...
I think a better example of movies which "wouldn't be allowed today" is probably something like the Hangover, which just mines outdated stereotypes & slurs for laughs. Just a sign of society moving on really (as much as Todd Phillips likes to cry about it, I feel his inability to adapt to the comedy landscape is really just a failure of the imagination). I thought the 21 / 22 Jump Street movie addressed this issue quite well it seems the shift took place sometime between the two releases
I could not disagree more with the author. I think their argument should be debated on the merits, but it bears mentioning that the author is still in their twenties, and has only seen ~74 movies a year since 2010. That's ... not a lot of movies, by cinema snob standards (or even by prolific Netflix viewer standards).
1. One simply does not run out of great movies to watch after 700 movies, even if all 700 have been great. You have to be way, way more in to movies than that for that to happen. When your go-to examples of great movies are Eyes Wide Shut and Pulp Fiction (two great movies to be sure, but they have over 300k ratings each on IMDb), the problem is obvious: your selections are too mainstream. You can definitely run out of blockbusters that are also great movies very quickly. This author didn't name a single movie I haven't seen, and I'm nowhere close to having seen enough to join the cinema snob club.
2. "Every couple of days I curl up on the couch at 10pm, scroll through Amazon Prime video..." Yes. This is the problem. Their source for movies is an aggregator that makes money primarily through getting you to stay subscribed while reducing the cost of content acquisition as much as possible. Most of what's on Amazon prime is trash, low budget attempts at blockbusters, with a handful of rotating blockbuster films to grab your attention on the front page. Meanwhile, The Criterion Collection has released over a thousand films on DVD and Blu-ray. Get your media from better sources!
Note that I'm not blaming the author for this specifically. The media landscape sucks right now. Everything is fragmented and if you only have access to one or two sources it's easy to see how you could get the idea that prestige TV is where all the serious work goes nowadays.
3. "Most Stories are the Same. Kurt Vonnegut once said that there are only six types of story." Doesn't this claim go precisely against the claim made earlier in the article that the books you read just get better and better as you read more?
4. I can't agree that David Lynch is a hack. I'd say this goes beyond a question of taste into a factually incorrect account of a director who is obviously very capable and knows what he's trying to do. Some movies are going to require more work to appreciate than others. Ironically, the essay itself complains about movies being too accessible! Likewise, Lost in Translation is not unrelatable simply because the main character is older than you are.
5. The idea that we can't make good comedies any more is laughable culture-war nonsense. The idea that adult comedy must utilize irreverence is silly, to begin with. The Favourite (2018), Druk (2020), Amélie, The Lobster, Turist (2014), etc etc are all good comedies that aren't unduly irreverent. It's also strange to see Superbad and The Hangover given as examples of comedy done right in an article about a supposed dearth of good movies.
Even if you want out-and-out comedies (instead of my suggested serious movies with comedic tones), there were plenty of those last decade too. I liked The Nice Guys, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Knives Out, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, and so on. Several of these are rather irreverent, I'd say. I guess if you're looking for more Hangover, they made Part III in 2013, less than a decade ago, and Jackass 4 is coming out later this year! I don't see what there is to complain about. (In the vein of low-brow comedy, there are some movies like Psycho Goreman and Mandy that are much more interesting than a lot of mainstream fare.)
6. Burnout is a thing. Maybe trying to write a review for every single movie you see can lead to enjoying them less, if you're not the kind of person who's wired to do that.
Quote: "One could quibble about creativity, but it’s generally thought in Hollywood that the last great comedy franchise to launch was The Hangover, created in 2009. There have been a few others, like Pitch Perfect and 21 Jump Street, but those both came out around the same time, in 2012. There effectively have been no comedy smash hits in for nearly a decade."</endquote>
Are you kidding me? Last great comedy was The Hangover? Does the author of the article ever heard of Toy Story 4 (now in theaters), Secret life of pets 1 & 2, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Zootopia etc etc? Granted, they are animated movies versus live action like The Hangover but they are movies, big ones, made by Hollywood, with a plethora of A list actors voicing the characters. The fact that they are animated is irrelevant, because the taste of the public always evolves. That's why action flicks of the '80s are no longer enough to entertain us, and they seem a cliche instead. We, the consumers, became more sophisticated, our taste evolved and demanding better quality for our money. Therefore the creativity went where was required, where the public demand it, not to be stuck in the same style of movies. Otherwise John Wayne's style of Western movies would still roll on big screen. Tell me, when was the last time such a Western made it big on box office? I tell you instead that HBO's Westworld is very much a Western style show that I deeply enjoy. That's where the creativity went! To be in the same pace as our modern, more subtle, taste.
FYI it's called "The Hangover" in English. Yet another film title that was translated from english to english for foreign markets
Wasn't there a scene in Hangover (the movie) where this was offered as service in Las Vegas?
I nominate Isao Takahata's "Grave of the Fireflies"
It's a great movie, but if you are going to watch, I highly recommend that you don't watch it alone and that you have something "fun" planned afterwords - maybe a fun dumb movie like The Hangover, play with your dog in the park, etc. Do not watch it by yourself and then go to bed. It is really haunting.
If you drank a vial, you'd be curled up on the ground or in bed, not living some scene from The Hangover like the movies portray.
Yes, maybe in one focus they are outliers, but the assumptions and parameters of the statistic should be qualified before dismissing the true harm alcohol causes. It's like the 'how would you like to die' game, slow or fast.
A DUI can be fatal on your first drunk at any age. I know personally of a college roommates brother, who was a straight A student, and got drunk for the third time in his life, and wound up killing somebody with his car. He went away for manslaughter. I'd say the side-effect there was pretty 'oh boy' for him and the victim. Think of how many people you may have seen go into a car after a few drinks, and how many of them actually got pulled over or fined for DUI. A lot of people drive under the influence and fly below the radar of the statistics. I have acquaintances and business associates who have been doing it for years.
Heroin and meth are stigmatized, and not a industrially-produced, government-controlled product like alcohol. They are almost always impure with other deleterious ingredients. Pure heroin used to be released on purpose in my old neighborhood in the 70s and 80s under somebody's 'brand' to hype sales of their 'product' for a few weeks even at the expense of a few overdoses.
Alcohol is under government regulation per % of alcohol per type of beverage, health inspections, and additives. People have a casual drink at lunch, but you don't see somebody whip out a needle at a casual business lunch, so meth and heroin tend to be relegated to dark alleys, loners at home, parties, etc...
The typical photo of a toothless, emaciated person comes from the side-effects of societal stigmatization, remaining in the shadow of crime, and less acceptance for that type of substance. There are plenty accounts of functional heroin addicts, and I knew/know a few personally. Their colleagues would never know. They eat right, go to work, and just use weekly and sometimes daily.
There are 17 times as many alcoholics as meth addicts per a 2012 study [1]. And alcohol kills slowly. Even the healthiest person who has 3 or more drinks a day is putting mileage on their body, the liver in particular, not to mention the mental effects. Choose your poison - one's government and socially embraced, the other(s) are associated with criminals and 'addicts'.
For a quick, non-academic feel of what I am trying to convey, watch and compare 'Requiem for A Dream' with any of the 'Hangover' movies. Can you find a meth/heroin movie like the 'Hangover' movies? A comedy that a broad range of people view and laugh at. Why not? The movie has what, 2 sequels already?
[1] https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/methamphetamine/what-scope-methamphetamine-abuse-in-united-states
As someone who has spent half of their life in France and the other half in North America, I would disagree. I return every 2 years or so to visit family, and am always appalled by the amount of English words that weasel their way into the language.
Marketers (in France and many other countries) have realized that the American legacy of progress and technology is still cool and edgy, and helps sell pretty much anything.
It honestly irritates me, as 95% of those intruder words are not only often misused in their context, but have perfect etymologically correct translations in French.
Un steak is spelled the same but pronounced "steck". The Hangover movie was literally called "Bad Trip" in France, instead of "La gueule de bois". "Shopping" is the go-to word to describe purchasing goods, even though "achat" is a perfectly valid word.
I could go on and on: un smartphone, la freebox (router), un smoking (a tuxedo), un string (a thong), wi-fi (this one is worldwide), chewing gum, businessman, boycott, startup, warning...
Well, probably the photo is supposed to be taken with the Hangover app in the first place. I don't know app development, but does an app that accesses the camera _have_ to store the photo alongside photos taken with the normal camera app?
My impression was: group of friends are in vegas having a "Hangover (the movie)" style night and agree to only take photos with this app. That way, come the morning they can all review them, but only when they're all together.
Obviously, if they take photos with their normal camera, or if all apps have to save photos to the filesystem and can be seen by the built in photogallery app, this doesn't work. Maybe the app uploads them to the Hangover site and then automatically deletes them from the phone?
Why would they have to? Just because there happens to be a movie called "The Hangover"?
I'm pretty sure the "Hangover" reference is to the series of (NSFW) still photos that played over the credits at the end of the first Hangover movie. Where they state "we're just going to look through these one time."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBuwZEMMAOM (NSFW)
I'll give you John Cho and Kal Penn.
But Ken Jeong? The guy whose biggest movie role to date is "Mr. Chow" in The Hangover, where he pranced about in tighty whities with an exaggerated Chinese accent and making slow jerkoff motions?
The same Ken Jeong who infamously did this shoot with GQ? http://www.gq.com/gallery/ken-jeong-kate-upton-mens-slim-corduroy-pants
Video if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hLYXqqgfAY
It's hard to perceive much of his work as anything but modern variations of Long Duk Dong, ultimately I consider his work to have added to Asian stereotypes.
The guy is free to take the role he wants, but IMO as far as "actors dismantling Asian stereotypes with their work" his career so far has been as far from it as it gets.
Also interestingly, they will "translate" movie titles that are in English into a different title, also in English. So "The Hangover" becomes "Very Bad Trip".
The assertion that new movies exist and are watched because they are higher tier than older movies seems completely ridiculous. There are movies made before the 70s with absolutely amazing cinematography on beautifully detailed film stock; "Lawrence of Arabia" comes to mind as one that stands up quite well, perhaps with the exception of modern pacing. Do you really think people watch "The Hangover," "The Hobbit," or "The Avengers" because they are higher tier entertainment or more realistic than "Lawrence of Arabia?" I'd also counter that "The Bicycle Thief" feels more heartbreakingly realistic than anything I've seen recently from a major studio. Of course there's no multi-million dollar ad campaign/media blitz or major studio release for it.
Ho ho ho. Thanks for reminding me about that. I came up with the filter names and descriptions.
The complete list was:
Hangover: Everything's too bright! Where did all the colors go? Argh, my head.
Drugstore: Perhaps you shouldn't have gone for the cheapest possible photo printing
Truffaut: You've always dreamed of appearing in a European art house movie
Blemish: For when only black and white can rescue your picture
Madison: You like to think you're Don Draper, but you're actually Pete Campbell
Jaundice: The relaxing yellow hue that accompanies a severe liver problem
Blue Rinse: You tried to wash your socks and your white shirts together, didn't you?
Cataract: This is how Grandma sees you
Doves Cry: A Prince-ly purple vibe
Williamsburg: Don’t you wish you’d lived there before it was cool to live there?
"Very Bad Things" was a much funnier take on the exact same plot as "The Hangover." The latter is almost a bowdlerized version of the former. All the edgy material has been removed for your protection.
Some bros go to Vegas. They cut a little too loose. Consequences and comedy ensue.
In "Very Bad Things," the consequences constitute a hilarious tragedy. The bros' wickedness comes back to bite them again and again, and we laugh as their lives spiral into doom. The laughs aren't in Vegas, they're in the plausible consequences of partying too hard.
In "The Hangover," the consequences are puerile gags featuring overgrown man-children. There is nothing that could possibly depress you in the film. After all the mayhem, nothing happens.
After waking up to the evidence of multiple felonies and life-threatening situations, the broheims just walk back to their old lives. Everything that was funny about "Very Bad Things" is absent. "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
I had never thought about categorizing movies in this way, now that I am it seems very clear. Some comedies revolve around the characters, their interaction and their situation in a funny, yet vaguely realistic way ("The Hangover"). Other comedies are blatantly absurd and ridiculous and are propelled forward by the jokes themselves which are often slapstick, the characters are tend to be flat and their situations simply a frame to hang the jokes upon ("Airplane!" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/).
I agree with the OP, having a mix of these types of comedies is a good thing. Too many of one or the other type wears on an audience. I haven't seen "The Hangover II" but already I have concerns that it will be funny in parts yet depressing overall ("Very Bad Things," http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124198/).
Right, but this is my point. The Hangover also 'republished' the tattoo artwork -- only they did so by filming Tyson instead of that other guy. So, IANL, but it would seem if you're going to sue over The Hangover 2, you would also have to sue for the original movie, and every magazine that has published Tyson's face since he got the tattoo.
The absurdities this lawsuit opens are never ending... :)
I'd agree with two here, while adding one of my own.
The Social Network - have seen it twice, both times eager to get out of the cinema and rush home to continue working on my own projects. We all know it's possible to create something and have the world take notice, but to see the journey and the all too familiar scenarios was hugely inspiring. As much as the lead character may come across as an unemotional awkward individual - you can't help but want his sharpness and drive. Oh, and success.
Good Will Hunting - Maybe I happened to watch this at the right time, during a period where I had met someone special and certain obstacles had me holding back. This movie had me book a flight the second the credits began rolling. There's similarities with The Social Network too, a special yet flawed individual, whose mistakes pale in comparison to his potential. Every line in the film is a quotable.
Hangover - This will be the first and only mention I expect of this film, but in terms of leaving a cinema and feeling inspired, this is up there for me. Would happily have left on the road trip of a lifetime if my groups of friends were to join me. Sure I'd have broken down 2 miles into the journey, broke and a little homesick but I'd have given it a go.
It is unfortunate that the only good movie that he has done is the hangover but I think that his rising stardom is good for his career as he will now be able to get more leading roles where his brand of humor will be encouraged rather than squashed. When he had his late night comedy talk show vh1 pretty much killed any chance he had of being funny with all the things he was forbidden to make fun of. Hopefully that changes.