The Hangover Part II - Is the Wolfpack as good?

When ‘The Hangover’ came out in 2009 nobody could have prepared themselves for how funny and how ingenious it was going to be. From Alan’s satchel to the stolen tiger, it was a riot from start to finish, so when it was announced there would be a second film people started to get wary - will it be as good as the first one? What can they possibly do to top it?

To put it bluntly the answer is it’s not as good as the first one and they really weren’t able to top it. However, it’s still entertaining and nearly as funny.

The film starts in pretty much the same way as its predecessor. The delectable Bradley Cooper, a.k.a Phil, calls up Doug’s wife Tracy (Sasha Barrese) to tell her that they’ve messed up. It brings chuckles from the audience as we know they’ve probably been up to some outrageous stuff but, disappointingly, it’s outrageously similar stuff to the first film.

Instead of becoming attached to a baby Alan (Zach Galifianakis) gets attached to a monkey, and instead of losing Doug the guys lose Stu’s (Ed Helms) brother-in-law and spend the film trying to find him. In fear of giving too much away I’m going to leave the details there.

As expected, Zach Galifianakis stole the limelight reprising his role as the childish but hilarious Alan Garner. There are many classic Alan lines which have already made their way onto Facebook as ‘like’ pages - as movie quotes do these days.

In a nutshell ‘The Hangover Part II’ is, as expected, not as brilliant as the first wolfpack outing but really the original was so zany and outlandish it really couldn’t hit the same heights. The success of the first movie has obviously lead to a much bigger budget for Part II and this has obviously been spend on explosions, strip clubs and speed boats which all make for some great moments.

So if you’re heading to the cinema with your wolf-pack this weekend we’d suggest you definitely give it a watch. (Maybe give the Roofies a miss though, yeah?)

Samantha Taylor