HANGOVER PART III   1.5 ***

 

      Man, if you thought things couldn't get any worse than THE HANGOVER PART II then sadly you were mistaken. I did not laugh at any time during the movie and hardly broke  even  a smile !! The Wolf Pack is back and this time a gangster (John Goodman) is after them because Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) stole forty-two million in gold. I'm really not going to waste anytime writing out everything going on here in regards to a plot because it doesn’t help ! It's clear that director and writer Todd Phillips along with stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis just made this thing for the money or they had some sort of contract that required them to do so. While watching this thing it became rather sad because there simply weren't any laughs but what was worse is that it didn't seem that the group was trying to make anything funny. This is without question one of the laziest comedies I've seen lately.

 

It's really amazing to see how this series has fallen after a clever first film but the old saying that sequels often end up poorly is certainly true. Cooper, Helms and Galifianakis fit their roles just fine but there's just no energy to be found here. Perhaps even they knew the screenplay was lackluster. Jeong as Chow is good in small doses but putting him into so much of this just made his character annoying. Goodman was good in his part but sadly he wasn't given much to do, which is the same for Mike Epps and Heather Graham. Also, I felt cheated because the previews suggested the story would be centered in Las Vegas……. a return to the scene of the first real Hangover. Not so. The Vegas part of the story was maybe 15 to 20 minutes at most .

 

THE HANGOVER PART III claims to be the final in an epic series of films and lets pray that it is true. Bad movies happen sometimes even when everyone has their hearts in the project. There's just no evidence here that anyone cared about anything other than money. Part II proved that people would show up no matter how bad it was and the filmmakers got even lazier by delivering something worse.

 

Rated R for pervasive language (lots of “F” word use) including sexual references, some violence and drug content, and brief graphic nudity.

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Clark