“The Hangover” launched like a rocket in the summer of 2009, becoming the sixth highest grossing film of the year and winning the Golden Globe for best comedy or musical. A throwback to R-rated comedies of the 1980s, its take-no-prisoners brand of humor was a breath of fresh air at a time when most comedies were playing things safe. Its success is all the more remarkable when you consider it was shot in just 15 days on a modest $35 million budget with the then-relatively unknown trio of Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis. Director Todd Phillips’s big gamble paid off big time, so it stood to reason that a sequel would follow, and before you knew it, a trilogy was born.
Anyone who had seen and loved “The Hangover” likely wondered how they could top the first movie for raunchy laughs, and indeed, Phillips addressed those concerns by leaning heavier into action, drama, and even pathos. Yet the sequels never lost their ability to tickle our funny bones, even if they didn’t receive the same rapturous critical praise as the first.
Here is every film in the “Hangover” trilogy, ranked from worst to best. If nothing else, these movies serve as cautionary tales against drinking too much in Las Vegas.
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3. The Hangover Part II
Two years after nearly losing Doug (Justin Bartha) during his Vegas bachelor bash, Stu (Ed Helms) doesn’t want to take any chances as he prepares to tie the knot. Since his fiancée, Lauren (Sasha Barrese), is from Thailand, Stu has his celebration there, with plans for an IHOP brunch with Doug, Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis). Also joining is Lauren’s 16-year-old Stanford scholar brother, Teddy (Mason Lee). After enjoying a few beers around a campfire, the gang wake up to find Alan with a shaved head, Stu with a face tattoo, and Teddy missing. It turns out that gangster Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) has followed them, and brought along some chaos.
Although he managed to squeeze “Due Date” in between, Todd Phillips launched into “The Hangover Part II” almost immediately after the first film came out. For many critics, the quick turnaround showed, resulting in a pretty rotten reception. In many ways, it’s a retread of the original, proving the old axiom that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Yet for Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Like the first film, ‘The Hangover Part II’ comes on as a slapstick orgy of naughtiness,” he wrote. “But beneath that, the movie is a reassuringly conventional comic detective story in which most of the fun lies in piecing the evidence of debauchery together.”
2. The Hangover Part III
Alan has gone off his ADHD medication and is spiraling out of control after the death of his father. Following an intervention, Phil, Stu, and Doug decide to take Alan to a rehab center, but their trip gets waylaid by Marshall (John Goodman), a drug lord after their old pal, Leslie Chow. Turns out Leslie stole millions of dollars from Marshall, and since Alan was the only one who kept in touch with him during his Thailand imprisonment, it stands to reason he’ll be able to track him down now that he’s escaped. Marshall kidnaps Doug and threatens to kill him if his money isn’t returned in three days, forcing the gang to return to the place it all started: Las Vegas.
“The Hangover Part III” was the last comedy Todd Phillips directed before leaving the genre for good, and its tone is exceedingly darker than the previous two. Whereas “Part II” was almost a carbon copy of the first, “Part III” takes a more action-centric approach, which didn’t work for the majority of critics. Yet the film has its champions, including Christy Lemire of The Associated Press, who said, “It dares to alienate the very audience that made ‘The Hangover’ the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time because, well, it isn’t exactly a comedy.”
1. The Hangover
Two days before getting married, Doug travels to Las Vegas with his friends Phil and Stu, plus his socially inept brother-in-law-to-be, Alan. The Wolfpack, as they call themselves, are ready for a weekend they won’t forget. Unfortunately, they get so drunk that not only do they forget what happened, but can’t find the groom either. Stu’s missing a tooth, a tiger is locked in the bathroom, and there’s a baby in the closet, all clues to Doug’s whereabouts. With the help of gangster Leslie Chow, stripper-turned-Ed’s-wife Jade (Heather Graham), and even Mike Tyson, the Wolfpack track Doug down in time for him to walk down the aisle.
When released in 2009, “The Hangover” quickly asserted itself as one of the greatest comedy movies of all time, raking in massive box office returns and even garnering accolades for its screenplay at the Writers Guild of America and BAFTA Awards. It was a massive gamble that paid off, returning audiences to a simpler time when comedies were raunchy, dirty, and politically incorrect. As Roger Ebert wrote in his rave for The Chicago Sun-Times, “Here is a movie that deserves every letter of its R rating.” Yet what’s most surprising is how much empathy the film engenders for its trio of degenerates who, at the end of the day, just want to have a good time together.
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