Threeof my good female friends, who I could usually find overcoming hangovers at their Saturday morning "Recovery Drunches" at Oxford's Pub, once made pinpricks in their thumbs and performed a ceremony becoming blood sisters. They were the only people I have actually known who could inspire a Judd Apatow buddy movie, and all three could do what not all women do well, and that is perfectly tell a dirty joke.
Maybe I liked "Bridesmaids" in their honor. Paul Feig's new comedy, written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, is about a group of women friends who are as unbehaved as the guys in "The Hangover." Don't tell me "unbehaved" isn't a word. It is now. And Wiig is rather brilliant in her physical comedy as she flies to Vegas as part of her BFF's bachelorette party; if it were not the wedding of her BFF, this trip would get her thrown out of the wedding. Her motto: "What happens in Vegas, starts on the plane."
Wiig plays Annie, whose Milwaukee bakery shop has just gone bust, who rooms with a surpassingly peculiar British brother and sister, and whose longtime friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is getting married. Naturally, she expects to be maid of honor, but begins to fear a rival in Helen (Rose Byrne), the rich and overconfident trophy wife of the groom's boss. You see that can lead to trouble.
Helen is one of those people who at birth was placed in charge of everything for everyone. It's not that she's trying to steal Annie's thunder, it's just that she can't comprehend that she isn't running the wedding. This leads finally to Annie's explosion at a bizarre French-themed bridal shower with an item of pastry that would strike even an editor of the Guinness Book of World Records as, well, excessive.
The movie does a good job of introducing a large cast and in particular keeping all the members of the bridal party in play. They include Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a mother of three adolescent sons ("My house is covered in semen"), and (my favorite) Megan (Melissa McCarthy), who has the sturdiness and the certainty of a fireplug.
Did I mention the movie was produced by Apatow? Love him or not, he's consistently involved with movies that connect with audiences, and "Bridesmaids" seems to be a more or less deliberate attempt to cross the Chick Flick with the Raunch Comedy. It definitively proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity. And it moves into areas not available to men, for example the scene when they're all trying on dresses at a bridal shop and the lunch they've just shared suddenly reappears, if you get my drift.
Not everybody can do physical comedy. Wiig's behavior on the flight to Vegas would win the respect of Lucille Ball. I don't even want to start describing what happens. In these day when you can get arrested on a plane for taking out your car keys, her behavior is a throwback to the good old days of airborne slapstick.
Yet the movie has a heart. It heals some wounds, restores some hurt feelings, confesses some secrets, and in general, ends happily, which is just as well, because although there are many things audiences will accept from women in a comedy, ending miserably is not one of them. That may be sexist, but there you are.
The Hangover Part II is a 2011 American comedy film produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The sequel to the 2009 film The Hangover and the second installment in The Hangover trilogy, the film was directed by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the script with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, and stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Justin Bartha, and Paul Giamatti.
It tells the story of Phil, Stu, Alan, and Doug, as they travel to Thailand. After the bachelor party in Las Vegas, Stu takes no chances and opts for a safe, subdued pre-wedding brunch. Things do not go as planned, resulting in another bad hangover with no memories of the previous night.
Development began in April 2009, two months before The Hangover was released. The principal actors were cast in March 2010 to reprise their roles from the first film. Production began in October 2010, in Ontario, California, before moving on location in Thailand. The film was released on May 26, 2011, and became the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2011 and the highest-grossing R-rated comedy during its theatrical run, but unlike the first film, The Hangover Part II received mixed reviews.
Two years after the events in Las Vegas, Stu Price is preparing to travel to Thailand for his upcoming wedding to Lauren, his fiance. In order to avoid the events in Las Vegas, Stu initially doesn't allow his three best friends, Doug Billings, Phil Wenneck and especially Alan Garner to accompany him. He also hosts his bachelor party at IHOP with Phil and Doug. Tracy asks Doug to convince Stu to allow her brother Alan to accompany them to Thailand. Stu reluctantly allows his friends (including Alan), Tracy and Phil's wife Stephanie to go with him. At the airport and much to Alan's dismay, they are joined by Lauren's 16-year-old brother, a Stanford University scholar named Teddy. At the rehearsal dinner, Lauren's father reveals his disapproval of Stu during a toast. Later that night, Stu hesitantly joins Phil, Doug, Alan and Teddy for a beer. Sitting at a campfire and roasting marshmallows, the group toast to Stu and Lauren's future happiness.
The next day, Phil, Stu and Alan awaken in a dilapidated hotel room in Bangkok with no memory of how they got there. Stu has a face tattoo similar to Mike Tyson's and Alan's head is completely shaved. They meet a chain-smoking capuchin monkey and discover that Leslie Chow followed them to Thailand on Alan's invitation. They cannot find Teddy, discovering only his severed finger. Chow begins to relate the events of the prior night, but he passes out after snorting a line of cocaine. Thinking Chow is dead, the panicked trio disposes of Chow's body in the hotel's ice box.
Through a tip from Doug (who left the campfire earlier and stayed at the resort), they go to a police station to pick up Teddy, but are given a wheelchair containing an elderly Buddhist monk. He refuses to reveal anything, having taken a vow of silence. After finding a business card, they travel to the smoldering ruins of the business, which is located in a ruined street, apparently destroyed in a riot the night before.
They enter a nearby tattoo parlor where Stu got his tattoo, and they learn that they started a fight that escalated into the riot. The trio returns the monk to his temple, where they are encouraged by the head monk to meditate. Alan manages to recall that they had been at a strip club, where they learn that Stu engaged in anal sex with a transsexual woman. Upon exiting, the trio is attacked by two Russian mobsters who take the monkey, and one shoots Phil in his arm.
After Phil is treated at a clinic, Alan confesses that he had drugged some of the marshmallows from the previous night with muscle relaxers and his ADHD medication in order to sedate Teddy, but accidentally mixed up the bags. A furious Stu blames Alan for ruining his life and attacks him, but Phil breaks it up and tells them that they have to stick together. During the scuffle, they notice an address and a time for a meeting written on Alan's stomach. They meet a gangster named Kingsley, who demands Chow's bank account password by the following morning in exchange for Teddy. They return to the hotel to try to find Chow's password, only to discover that he is still alive. They steal the monkey, who had the code given to him and put inside his vest for safe-keeping by Chow, back from the Russian mobsters through a violent car chase, during which the monkey is shot and injured.
After taking the code and leaving the monkey outside a veterinary, the group completes the deal with Kingsley the next morning. Interpol agents appear and arrest Chow. Kingsley turns out to be an undercover agent, who tells the trio that he does not actually know where Teddy is.
Desperate, Phil calls Doug's wife Tracy to tell her they cannot find Teddy. During a rolling blackout, Stu realizes where Teddy is. The trio rushes back to the hotel to find Teddy who is in the elevator (though he is still missing a finger). Teddy had woken up earlier than the others, but became trapped after the power went out when he went to get ice for his finger. The four use Chow's speedboat to travel back to the wedding reception.
Arriving just as Lauren's father is about to cancel the wedding, Stu makes a defiant speech, and rejects being a boring dentist and instead insists he is quite wild. Impressed, Lauren's father gives the couple his blessing. Alan presents Stu with a special gift at the reception: a musical guest performance by Mike Tyson. Teddy later discovers that he had taken many pictures during the night on his cell phone before the battery died. The group, along with Tyson, agree to look at the pictures together once before deleting them.
Variety reported in July 2009, that production on The Hangover 2 would begin in October 2010, for a May 26, 2011 release, following the same production schedule used for the first film.[18] Also in July, Zach Galifianakis stated in an interview with Latino Review that the film will be set in Thailand, "Well, I think we're going to Thailand. The problem with Hangover 2 is that we have to live up to what we did which is very difficult. So we get, I think, kind of kidnapped. It has nothing to do with the bachelor party. We're definitely not doing that again but we do end up in an exotic place. That's all I know."[19]
In January 2010, Phillips dismissed rumors that Zac Efron would join the cast of The Hangover 2, though Ed Helms stated that Efron would be a welcomed addition, commenting, "I love that guy. He's actually really funny."[20]
In March 2010, Phillips denied reports that the film would take place in Mexico or Thailand stating, "I don't know. There's a lot of rumors. There was rumor also that it was going to Mexico or something and neither are true."[21] Also by March, Galifianakis, Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Bartha completed negotiations and signed deals to reprise their roles in the sequel.[4]
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