Welcome to We Can Fix It, a new series from Crave Online that offers constructive criticism to disappointing movies instead of just hurling hilariously phrased insults in their direction. If you’re just looking for movie recommendations, look elsewhere. In We Can Fix It we take a hard look at the movies that let us down and reverse-engineer them to figure out what went wrong and how it could have been avoided. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn from our mistakes. This week: The Hangover: Part II.
Before you start saying how hilarious it was and support your argument with impressive box office numbers, remember that there’s more to a movie than kneejerk reactions and financial success. That may be enough for the money men, but if you look beyond the penises and impressive grosses The Hangover: Part II suffers from a very simple problem that everyone seems to agree on… It’s just The Hangover: Part I all over again. And that’s not something we want from our sequels, unless you actually prefer Home Alone 2: Lost in New York to the original Home Alone.
Let’s take a quick rundown of some of the similarities (SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD):
1. Both films are about the exact same group of guys who are drugged in the exact same way just before one of them gets married.
2. Both films open with a phone call, in which they are about to admit their defeat at a moment when all seems lost, after which the rest of the movie is told in flashback.
3. Both films find our heroes awaking in a hotel room filled with clues, a wild animal and a small, lovable creature Zach Galifianakis learns to care for after an epic night of debauchery (a tiger and a baby in the original… the monkey serves both functions in the sequel).
4. Both films feature the protagonists retracing their steps to locate a missing friend.
5. Both films feature Ed Helms awaking with a surprisingly mutilated face (a missing tooth in the original, Mike Tyson’s tattoo in the sequel).
6. Both films find Ed Helms cheating on his significant other with a prostitute.
7. Both films feature the protagonists attempting to exchange ill-gotten goods for the missing friend, only to find that their friend is somewhere else entirely.
8. Both films end when location of their missing friend is pieced together at the last minute, and once revealed it becomes clear that they never even needed to retrace their steps in the first place.
9. Both films have extremely similar circumstances explaining the location of said lost friend.
10. Mike Tyson.
We could go on like this, but let’s move forward now.
