I have not been as disappointed with a sequel as I was with THE HANGOVER PART II. it was a joke for joke copy of the first movie, which itself was a genuinely good and original comedy. There is almost no bigger disparity between original and sequel than THE HANGOVER to PART II. I don’t know anyone personally who thought THE HANGOVER PART II was in any way a good movie. Director Todd Phillips seems to disagree with me.
In fact, Phillips doesn’t just think that THE HANGOVER PART II is a good movie, he seems to think it is heads and tails better than the original. In an interview with Empire, he gave this little nugget.
“Yes, we do a wake-up and a blackout but every joke in THE HANGOVER PART II is completely different. My feeling is that it’s the better movie of the two. I think in five or ten years time, people will come to realize how brilliant THE HANGOVER PART II.”
Um, no. I could not disagree more. I would not use the word brilliant to describe either movie, but essentially cheaping out and filming the same movie but setting it in Thailand is not brilliant. Maybe if someone had remade THE HANGOVER as PART II twenty years from now, one could say the remake was better, but when they are released a few years apart, not so much. THE HANGOVER PART III looks to keep a similar formula, but with the trailers showing they are going for broke with this being the final movie, we could be in for a decent sequel.
But no, Mr. Phillips, in the annals of film history, no one will look back and consider THE HANGOVER PART II as the pinnacle of your trilogy. We will see on May 24, 2013 if THE HANGOVER PART III outdoes the original. After all, Phillips is promising this one will be totally different since people “will die” in this one. Yeah, that sets a movie apart.