A Slice of Bacon

On Thursday afternoon, against my better judgement, I hopped in a car with my girlfriend and best buddy to make the lengthy drive to Tempe, Ariz. to buy tickets to “The Hangover 2.” Of the three people in the car, approximately zero had any positive expectation of the Todd Phillips sequel, but we were going per a birthday request and, as a lot of Americans will say over the next couple of weeks, truly wanted to see just how good or bad this could be. 

My problem before seeing the show is it is nearly impossible to recreate comedy genius. No matter your thoughts on Phillips, you have to admit that “The Hangover” was an incredible movie, a surprise comedy that had exactly zero high profile actors in it that bamboozled the Summer movie industry and created a monster. People quote “The Hangover” more than “The Godfather” these days, and it’s because we didn’t expect anything from it. Here were a few guys that got fucked up at a bachelor party and couldn’t remember anything, and spent the rest of the weekend in Las Vegas (easy place for our kind to identify with) trying to piece the weekend together. It’s on-the-surface comedy, but the writing and directing was so much more. We realized just how funny Ed Helms really is. We found out Bradley Cooper could become an A-list actor. We were introduced to the genius behind Zach Galifianakis. It was, in this day and age, a perfect comedy. 

But our society will forever repaint The Sistine Chapel if it brings in eyes, and more importantly, dollars, and that’s what happened with the sequel. “Originality be damned, we are a business,” and can you really blame anyone for that? “The Hangover 2” is going to make half a billion dollars, if not more, and if you and I ran a business, and had a product that we could keep tweaking and making nine figures, we’d do it without any hesitation (just ask Apple and their iPad 2). 

So that is where the problem lies. The only people really at fault are people like myself, who don’t laugh at fart jokes, and find Paul Rudd miles funnier than Jim Carrey, but continue to plop down ten dollars to see these films, because A.) there isn’t much else out there to laugh at and B.) because we’re truly interested in the end product, even if we aren’t expecting much. 

I believe during the 102 minutes of TH2, I was brought to a chuckle twice, and once from the unlikeliest of candidates (when Ken Jeong’s character, my least favorite from the first movie, exits an elevator and brushes off salutations from two beautiful hostesses). But again, you can’t fault this movie for that. They had their cookie recipe, changed an ingredient or two, and made a big batch because everyone knows they’re delicious. 

I wish this wan’t the case anymore with movies, but it will forever be. I wish more comedies ran the route of “Cedar Rapids,” and brought together some strange characters in an even stranger situation and made gold out of it. I wish society wasn’t drawn to the big light in the middle of the park, and could avoid these blockbuster laugh-tracks for something more creative and original. I wish it wasn’t so easy to toss a few bucks out of your wallet for two hours of disappointment (we get enough of that in our real life). 

But the movie business is just that, a business, and TH2 is a great product sure to make the rich even richer. And that’s where we’re at right now with movies.