The Hangover Part II *

Director: Todd Phillips

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis

Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Jeffrey Tambor, Jamie Chung

Paul Giamatti, Mason Lee

It's not that The Hangover Part II is bad (it is) but it's just how unnecessary it feels what makes such a waste of time. Essentially, in order to capitalize on modern audience's needs for lazy writing, the people behind this film have remade the first movie and changed a few bits.

Instead of Las Vegas, the action moves to Thailand, instead of a cute baby for Galifianakis to obsess about, we get a drug dealing monkey and instead of having Justin Bartha's character getting married, now we have Ed Helms' doing it.

If you had a blast watching people reduced to stereotypes in the first one and love the way in which bromance has become the new rom-com, then this movie might still treat you to a fine time. However for those seeking their entertainment without condescendingly chauvinistic winks at how masculinity only comes to happen if you get shot, make fun of gays, think about getting laid all day long, have no regard for societal rules etc. then this film will be a massive waste of time.

Perhaps the perfect analogy to describe this movie is that it does feel like a lesson not learnt. Watching it and realizing how preposterous it can get, might remind you of a hangover you got the week after you promised yourself not to drink any more.

Any seemingly meta explorations of human behavior found in the previous statement, which might make the movie sound any better, are pure coincidence.

The Hangover **

Director:Todd Phillips,
Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis
Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Jeffrey Tambor

The bachelor party is the heterosexual male ritual by excellence. During it, the groom-to-be is indulged by his friends with the last moments of utter freedom he will have for as long as the marriage lasts.
The bachelor party in Las Vegas, is the only location where Hollywood sees fit to fulfill this heterosexual male ritual.
In "The Hangover" we miss the actual party, but wake up with the guys the morning after amidst what can only be described as disaster.
Cocky schoolteacher Phil (Cooper) calls bride-to-be, Tracy (Sasha Barrese) to let her know that her fiancé Doug (Bartha) has gone missing. With only five hours left before the wedding, we go back in time two days trying to uncover what the hell happened.
Doug and Phil left Los Angeles with nervous, nerdy dentist Stu (Helms) and Tracy's weird brother Alan (Galifianakis); after a couple of Jager shots at the Caesar's Palace roof, they wake up to find their $4,200 a-night-suite completely shattered, one of Stu's teeth missing, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet.
With only twenty four hours left to find the groom, and the title physiological effect ailing them, they set out like frat boy detectives to uncover what went wrong.
The plot, like many before it, indulges in all that is crass, loud and politically incorrect (baby masturbation should not be as funny as it is when delivered by Galifianakis) and while some of the situations work out for great comedic relief, most of the movie fails to click.
The ensemble is great, Cooper stretches out his pretty boy-ness to the max (his cockiness is disturbingly charming sometimes), Helms gives the movie a soul of sorts (even if his character is forced to enact some over the top couple drama with his possessive girlfriend played by Racahel Harris), Galifianakis gives the kind of performance deemed to achieve eternal emulations and Graham turns in a surprisingly sweet performance as the hooker with a heart of gold (she channels Julianne Moore's Amber Waves from "Boogie Nights").
Even if their distinctive personalities get a chance to shine, you never really know how is it that they all became friends in the first place because honestly the one thing they have in common is that they are guys.
And it is through this where the film has both its greatest ally and foe.
For some guys in the audience the film will feel like constant deja-vus and remind them of how they bonded through shameful experience (no morality tales here, even the ending gives the guys something to cheer about).
Some others though will see the film as a representation of everything that might result terrifying for men(morning after babies, drunken marriages, insane significant others, small gangsters who can kick their asses, Mike Tyson...) -one might even say the whole plot is a subconscious manifestation of the groom's fear of commitment- and wonder why the hell is this marketed as a comedy when it should be a horror movie.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army *1/2

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Luke Goss, Anna Walton

The minute when quantity was confused with quality and self gratification mistaken for artistic vision, Guillermo del Toro became a successful filmmaker.
Boasting more strange creatures than a "Star Wars" brothel, this sequel to "Hellboy" begins by telling the story of a truce made by humans and mythical creatures ages ago to end a war that involved the title army.
Flash forward to our era where the truce is about to be broken by the rebel Prince Nuada (Goss) who believes the human race has done enough harm to the planet and plans to bring the golden army back to life to destroy civilization.
With this threat reaching beyond usual parameters, it's up to the members of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Development to stop Nuada from his goal.
The most notorious member of the bureau is Hellboy (Perlman), the troubled demon who is now going through a rebellion against authority while he deals with his relationship with the fiery Liz (Blair).
Coming back is also Ben Sapien (Jones), the fish like erudite who develops a crush on Nuada's twin sister, the noble Princess Nuala (Walton).
Working with baroque myths and tracing back fairy tale elements to reasonable and logical sources, del Toro delivers a visual spectacle the likes of which only he knows how to do.
There's action and detail going in almost every thing in the film, with creatures springing from unexpected places and layered setpieces that demand to be seen in awe.
But unlike better filmmakers del Toro has never been able to justify his need to put all these things up on the screen and much less why the audience needs to pay a movie ticket to endure this constant selfidulgement.
It's good that his ensemble sometimes takes your mind off this, with the phenomenal Perlman making the movie all his own (despite the forced dialogues which wink at you more than they should). The characters however always are left on a second plane, while del Toro pushes himself into the realm of "what next?".
Style over substance doesn't always have to be a bad thing and in fact it can be very good when it's worked for a reason other than to exploit art direction and visual effects, but del Toro isn't very apt in this sense and during one key scene when one of the characters could perform a simple action that would save us a whole hour of film (without taking into consideration the unused factor of dramatic tension) del Toro instead chooses to unleash an unnecesary gigantic creature with which he sends out an environmentalist message and shows off his imagination's works.
Hellboy and the others end up looking like incompetent idiots, but let's face it, in "Hellboy" it's a del Toro world, and not even his characters are invited.