THE LOST EVENING

“Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.”

Don Birnam, THE LOST WEEKEND

“For tomorrow may bring sorrow, so tonight let us be gay.”

William Powell, MY MAN GODFREY and THE THIN MAN

Some guys just don’t know when to quit - - and “some guys just can’t handle Vegas”, a valet outside of Caesars Palace comments with tag-line ingenuity in Todd Phillips’ THE HANGOVER. It is ironic, and perhaps, interesting to note that the movie takes place in and around a hotel thematically displaying the Roman Empire, so, could it be that a movie chock-full of so much preposterousness and base behavior might very well signal the imminent collapse of a Hollywood Empire?

Not so much a whodunit as it is a ‘whatdunit’, the movie follows three groomsmen: Phil (the ‘experienced’ and married alpha male of the group as well as a scornful schoolteacher who exhibits dangerous and obscene characteristics not befitting a father figure); Stu (a dentist proud of his doctoral degree whose self-esteem has been literally shattered by his domineering girlfriend, Melissa) and Alan (a man-child with a penchant for lewdness, a demeanor of awkward immaturity and a legal order to stay a reasonable distance from elementary schools and Chuck E. Cheese restaurants hanging over his heavily-bearded head) as they take their respective friend and Alan’s brother-in-law-to-be, Doug, to Sin City to celebrate his last night as a bachelor before he’s married in Los Angeles.

As they toast their (unbeknownst to them) Rufalin-spiked cocktails on the roof of Caesars with promises of “a night {we'll} they’ll never forget”, it quickly becomes an evening that any sensible moviegoer watching cannot suspend his or her disbelief and quite frankly, makes for a difficult entertainment to discuss around the water cooler. For instance, how far can a legitimate conversation go after mentioning “remember when they put five roofies in that raw steak and fed it to the tiger?” Meanwhile, my fondness for Howard Hawks’ BRINGING UP BABY grows as the leopard, Baby, was treated with much more humanity and the film itself contained many more belly laughs.

In contrast with the marvelous screwball farce of MY MAN GODFREY (a film out of HANGOVER’s league entirely) William Powell’s Godfrey succumbs to drunkenness only to have one of the major characters attempt to take advantage of the situation and frame him for a crime he doesn’t commit while in his drunken stupor. In a clever sequence of events, Godfrey outwits his adversary with an accent on elegance without muscle, profanity or (self-) humiliation while Phillips’ characters resort to and take these for granted. How times and the cinema has changed. Degradation has not only become the norm, it is the new punch line. Slipping on a banana peel is to Mack Sennett, as Zach Galafianakis being fellated by a sexagenarian in an elevator is to Todd Phillips. It is my hope that this review will have more redeeming value than the movie in which it is critiquing.

While GODFREY consists of two spoiled, drunk society girls who, on their way home from an evening of heavy drinking, break a series of windows along Fifth Avenue and walk a horse “up the front steps” of their palatial abode leaving it in their library, their actions not only have the makings of delightful screwball farce, but the girls are found guilty of their crimes and their father pays a penalty. On the other hand, the leads in THE HANGOVER get away with everything they engage in - - even if it’s on the verge of murder.

THE HANGOVER’s producers, including Chris Bender (no pun intended), have thrown (up) together sequences for a movie so deliriously implausible that any reasonable viewer may be too busy trying to make sense of the dramatic landscape while the filmmakers may have hoped to enshroud the impossible goings-on with low brow schtick. A clever plot device once employed by Hitchcock (the MacGuffin) to propel his films forward to an exciting and intelligent climax, here, is nothing more than several elements of sheer buffoonery that warrants a roll of the eyes or to be respectful of the activities of the movie’s characters, a palm slapping one’s forehead.

These inconceivable antics include, but are not limited to the following:

• Ascending a stairwell in a seemingly high-security, ultra plush hotel environment with roof-access where our four hapless heroes engage in the start of their drinking binge. One thing that Las Vegas doesn’t have on short supply is surveillance cameras and if it wasn’t a security guard, a maintenance technician would’ve surely impeded their stroll to the summit of Caesars Palace.
• After an evening of alcohol abuse by all parties involved, Jade (an exotic dancer-cum-Stu’s accidental bride) manages to forget her maternal responsibilities and leaves her infant in a closet at the scene of the crime: Doug’s bachelor suite, which resembles the aftermath of Hiroshima, but with more neon and an elaborately assembled beer-amid. When she is later reunited with her child, Heather Graham’s portrayal of Jade is such that she didn’t really mind that he was missing in the first place and any heartfelt connection between mother and child is simply non-existent. Her immediate uncovering of her blouse to breastfeed is not only un-believable, but vulgarizes the sacred act as Alan ogles her exposed nipple.
• Las Vegas has its share of magicians from The Amazing Jonathan to Lance Burton to the world-renowned David Copperfield and the comic-stylists Penn & Teller, but the act of trespassing into Mike Tyson’s Nevada compound to cat-nap a Bengal tiger - - amidst more surveillance cameras - - return it to a hotel room through the hustle and bustle of The Strip and past any curious guests’ and employees watchful eyes in the lobby and hallways of Caesars Palace is an act I’d like to see to believe. However, Phillips may continue to keep that hand close to his chest. Besides, the sequence (gag) has so many holes, it would surely collapse upon itself before its secrets ever reached the director’s cut and/or DVD commentary track.
• Regarding the surveillance cameras in the movie with no one paying them any attention, I’m reminded of the old adage: the light’s on, but no one’s home. There is an unmistakable significance with relation to the movie’s production.
• A doctor (one of the most empathetic of professions) not only gives short shrift to Phil upon his inquiring after Doug’s (dis) appearance in a hospital, but also showers the men with unjustifiable expletives. Police officers also instigate a group of school children to take turns firing a taser gun at Stu, Doug and Alan. The scene isn’t so much gut-bustingly funny as it is undeniably sadistic.
• That a naked Chinese man would survive a few minutes of triple-digit Las Vegas heat - - let alone roughly twelve hours - - in the trunk of a car and still have the energy to pounce on his prey and inflict several blows with a baseball bat … before running naked across an expanse of desert space and managing to reconnect with his gang of thugs without getting arrested by local law enforcement for indecent exposure.
• Most mattresses I’ve ever encountered in my lifetime are so tightly-knit and threaded that they’d likely bounce off of a statue rather than be impaled by one.
• After Doug is recovered at the climax of the film and found horribly sunburned on the roof of Caesars Palace, his best men decide to drive to the wedding in Los Angeles with the top down in Doug’s father’s Mercedes convertible.

Film directors are welcome to take liberties with their actors and develop the action in any way they please for the sake of entertainment and to whichever conclusion they wish to fashion - - but Mr. Phillips’ movie is a veritable display of cliché (Keanu Reeves and Lori Loughlin starred in the [cult] film, THE NIGHT BEFORE [1988] that is not only a very amusing coming-of-age film re: mistaken identity, flashbacks and Reeves’ character forgetting how he got to where he is ‘the night after’, the similarities between the films is apparent and might be considered a direct ancestor to Phillips’ movie.), wholly unbelievable plotting and is a downright disrespectable guilty pleasure. But not the guilty pleasure you’re familiar with: whereas one often connotes cinema to a visual or aural ‘guilty pleasure’, THE HANGOVER is a movie in violation of any such amusement or intelligent stimulation.

Often when one consumes an alcoholic beverage in a film, the result of such absorption can lead to an adventurous, romantic or depressing outcome. Like a magic potion, it can take the character to a new environment he never thought existed or chance sinking to the deepest depths or rising to the highest heights: the libation can poison as it exhibits the innocent shade of pure white milk (SUSPICION); it can make one live forever … for a price (DEATH BECOMES HER); it can be a metaphoric Molotov cocktail on one’s spirit and the monkey on one’s back (WRITTEN ON THE WIND) or the signature drink of a super spy mixed the way he likes it to calm his nerves (GOLDFINGER). When applied to a film in a specific manner, alcohol can be something more significant than just a typical social stimulant/lubricant. Alice can relate to that just after she stumbled down the rabbit hole. If only we found out that the Jagermeister in THE HANGOVER was part of some devious megalomaniacal plot of a group of cunning Nazi war criminals (or any modern type super party, take your pick) to smuggle uranium (ala NOTORIOUS) dust (or any type element, you may again choose) into the United States who are in cahoots with an underground gambling syndicate in Las Vegas bent on dominating the Western World - - that would make for an exciting (and equally silly) adjustment to the plot.

That THE HANGOVER has remained within the top three box-office positions since it’s emergence in theatres (and the release of this review) is testament to the contemporary viewing attitudes that exist. It would be a different matter altogether if it were to shake the foundation of subversive cinema to its core. Films have a unique way of distorting reality once the lights go out and our fears and delights are captured on the screen before us. But there is nothing truly subversive about THE HANGOVER to speak of and if you strip it of its disrespectful repartee that is doubling for its comedy and the countless, awkward one-liners served up like shots at a Tijuana Quinceañera, you’re left with something that is no more hilarious and un-funny than it is deplorable. Unless it’s absolutely necessary to a script/film, profanity is the easiest and most abused cop-out - - why would a filmmaker want to restrict himself and his content?

This isn’t subversive filmmaking. It’s not even risky filmmaking. It’s Phillips doing what he thinks is in vogue. I attended a screening of GUNGA DIN recently which was introduced by the filmmaker’s son, George Stevens, Jr. He commented that when he was in the passenger seat driving home from an Oscar ceremony with his father and the Oscar statuette his father had won that evening was sitting between them, George, Sr. leaned over to his son and remarked in so many words, “In 25 years, we’ll see how good this film really is.” The ultimate pity about THE HANGOVER and so many contemporary movies like it is that they too often date themselves: throughout the movie are plastered images of show billboards and erected casinos that may soon no longer exist. Too often, filmmakers shoot what they think is fashionable and not take the risks that the MY MAN GODFREY’s and the BRINGING UP BABY’s have done before them degrading themselves and their film to a base level entertainment. That studios take risks on producing (and re-making) these films leaves no doubt we’re in a constant period of flux where the moguls invest in the “safe” films that have been manufactured time and time again only to be accepted with open arms in the quiet solitude of the darkened theatre. It’s an ever-moving, ever-winding vicious circle.

I need a drink …