The Hangover
This starts strong, but gets worse and worse, the more it goes on. The credits photos destroy the remaining mystery, don’t explain the joke, guys! American comedies never disappoint.
This is an extremely masculine film, crossing into testosterone poisoning, but not playful like Commando. It’s just brutish and dumb.
Every woman is disposable, either literal cumdumpsters, or hags that nag and nag. Since the NC-17 rating exists, there’s a distinct lack of penises on this masculine film (a Boogie Nights sendoff in the credits, maybe).
Ed Helms is the only one that has an arc, a modicum of humanity. The groom is just a McGuffin, Zack Whatshisname is literally Rain Man (mentioned by name!), and Bradley Cooper is the braggadocio that doesn’t actually does anything.
Kudos to him for playing something so outside his comfort zone, I guess. An absolute idiot and hate sink.
It’s hard to believe this director also did Tár, but it’s more similar than it seems on the surface. The anti-wokeness, the masculine energy, the high-end but ugly architecture. He also did Road Trip (fitting), and Joker (better).
How the hell do you do sequels? Either do the same film again (maybe with Ed Helms getting married to the Vegas ho?), or keep escalating, but do they fall for the roofies again? The memory loss is the schtick, right?
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.