"The Hangover Part III" Review

WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS

Ladies and gentlemen, The Wolfpack is back... again. And this time, there's no bachelor party, no pictures, no Mike Tyson, and no musical interlude from Ed Helms. What could go wrong?

In The Hangover Part III, The Wolfpack's inebriated escapades come full circle when Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Stu (Ed Helms), and Phil (Bradley Cooper) find themselves confronted by Marshall (John Goodman), a ruthless drug kingpin who's on the lookout for Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) and the $42 million in gold bricks Chow stole from him. Marshall threatens to kill a kidnapped Doug (Justin Bartha, who always seems to be left out of these capers) if the guys don't find Chow and return the gold in three days' time. The search takes The Wolfpack from Tijuana back to Las Vegas where new (and some revisited) adventures await.

Part III is a welcome departure from the usual Hangover formula, but overall it just doesn't feel like The Hangover.

Now through two sequels, the tone of these films has gotten darker each time. Part II was the same as the first movie with a different setting, an unnecessary amount of violence, and far too much male genitalia. Part III plays out almost entirely like an action-caper with only a handful of funny lines peppered in. It's not the quotable, heartfelt, laugh-fest that its 2009 predecessor was. It feels like a different animal entirely. Like a cocaine-fed rooster or a headless giraffe.

Speaking of which, the giraffe gag should come as no surprise to those who have seen the trailers. The same goes for most of the best jokes, actually. The humor doesn't feel as fresh as it used to, and as a result, it makes this third Hangover almost entirely forgettable.

Melissa McCarthy is in it, for God's sake! How can you make a movie with The Wolfpack and Melissa McCarthy and it NOT be an absolute riot? You darken the mood and keep everyone but Chow sober the whole time, that's how. Turns out, these guys just aren't as much fun when they aren't roofied or drugged with spiked marshmallows. That being said, you'll want to stick around for a scene that comes about halfway through the credits that steals the entire movie. Trust me, it's classic.

Along with that scene, I really enjoyed the references to the first movie. Jade (Heather Graham) returns, along with a 4-year old Baby Carlos, and Marshall is actually a character that Black Doug (Mike Epps) references at the end of the first film. We also get to see what exactly played out that first night in Vegas when Alan bought the Jagermeister and roofies from Black Doug.
There's also a sequence at the very end that shows The Wolfpack in their classic slow-motion walk-up. It's set to Kanye West's "Dark Fantasy", and there's a line in the song that goes "the plan was to drink until the pain over / but what's worse, the pain or the hangover?" It makes more sense when you see it in context, but I thought that sequence was a perfect send-off for Alan, Phil, Doug and Stu.

While director/screenwriter Todd Phillips and co-writer Craig Mazin (Identity Thief) choose to leave behind the traditional Hangover formula, which should've been done in Part II, what's left is a caper with a much darker tone and a sense of humor that's lost its edge. Part III suffers heavily for these reasons and can't be entirely saved by clever references to the other films or a raucous credits scene. One Hangover should be enough, shouldn't it?

6/10