"Every joke in Hangover II is completely different. My feeling is that it's the better movie of the two. I think it's human nature that any time people want to try something for a second time, people go to a negative. I think in five or ten years time, people will come to realize how brilliant Hangover II is."
-Hangover II director Todd Phillips to Empire about the brilliance of Hangover II.
Looks like they won't have to digitally alter Stu's face tattoo for the DVD release of The Hangover Part II: Warner Bros settled with tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill over the Tyson-inspired ink on Helms' face, apparently deciding that they could afford to pay him off now that the movie has made half a billion dollars. Too bad! I was really looking forward to seeing the butterfly tattoo they were going to swap in instead.
It's not too surprising, seeing as The Hangover Part II became the fastest-grossing live-action comedy ever over the weekend, but the wheels have begun turning for the inevitable third Hangover movie already. Screenwriter Craig Mazin, who co-wrote Part II with Scot Armstrong and Todd Philips, is signed on to write so far, although I'm sure he won't be alone.
OK, so Philips has said that he plans to have the third movie be a big departure from the plots of the first two, which were nearly identical. Any guesses as to what will happen? Maybe Alan will get engaged to a stuffed animal and the boys head [...]
The Hangover Part II officially opened last night at midnight, and the numbers for just those showings are already pretty nuts: $10.4 million. That puts it on track for a downright-crazy $125 million five-day weekend. Who's excited for The Hangover Part III: The Guys Have Permanent Brain Damage??
In addition to being hilarious in Community, Role Models and The Hangover, Ken Jeong has the admirable quality of being exactly as giddy and grateful as a person should be when they get paid to do the thing they love. He also consistently makes everyone want to sob into their hot little hands. While filming The Hangover Part 2, Jeong recalls "Zach [Galifianakis] and Todd [Phillips] would joke around, and it was like you’re a 7-year-old kid in front of your comedy idol. It was like a Ping-Pong game. They’re like, 'Ken, you should see the look on your face.' I had like the biggest shit-eating [...]
Isn't it weird to think about the lives of people who spend all day, every day focusing on executing idiotic lawsuits like the one Louis Vuitton has served Warner Brothers with over Zach Galifianakis using Louis Vuitton luggage in The Hangover Part II? I wonder what they dreamed of being as children.
"My son's performance was quite good. He is quite a serious actor but this is just a comedy." – Ang Lee, whose son, Mason, played the lost-but-eventually-found Teddy in The Hangover Part II. ("It's not just a comedy, dad! You don't understand me! I hate you!")
It might not surprise you to hear that The Hangover Part II raked in $105.8 million over Memorial Day weekend, but considering how scathing some of The Hangover Part II reviews were, it's a testament to the nation's love of drunken mistakes that the film broke the opening weekend record for top-grossing live-action comedies, coming second only to The Matrix Reloaded for R-rated films. To give you a sense of perspective, The Hangover earned $45 million its first weekend, and was still a run-away success.
With that in mind, welcome to The Hangover Part II open thread, where you can discuss original vs. sequel, ponder the [...]
The reviews for The Hangover Part II are out, and boy, are they mixed. Apparently Hangover Part II stays pretty true to the original plot, and depending on who you ask, that's either its charm or its downfall. Says Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, "Here, as in The Hangover, the laughs aren't just staged, they're superlatively engineered — even if that means, at moments, that they feel like they're falling into formatted slots. When they don't, the movie can be flat-out hilarious." The New York Times' Manohla Dargis praises Zach Galifianakis as "a naturally funny screen presence, and he gives Alan a strong current of menace, turning him [...]
Zach Galifianakis's Time article opens with the comedian living for two weeks in his Subaru on the streets of L.A. (later, he camped out in an Audi) and ends with Galifianakis actively repulsed by the fans that made him famous. "My whole attitude is, You can't think of funny s— yourself? You have to come watch me?" Galifiankis says, explaining a bit that invariably ends with him screaming at an audience member to shut up. Despite his massive success on the heals of The Hangover, Galifianakis continues to evolve as a prickly, complicated comedian, a performer who loves his family and operates from a clear moral center, when [...]
Michael Alan Rubin is suing Warner Brothers, arguing that the plot of The Hangover Part II was stolen from a script he wrote about his 2007 honeymoon in Thailand and India. He claims that the movie also constitutes an "exploitation of [his] private real life." Which begs the question, how much dignity would his life have to be exploited in the first place if he truly spent that much time with a monkey in a cutoff denim vest?
Rubin is also suing for defamation, claiming that "the filmmakers suggested the inference that he was under the influence of drugs when he ditched his girlfriend and proposed to a [...]
Warner Bros. is not having it, and if someone forces their hand, they will digitally alter Stu's tribal ink to get around the Hangover II face tattoo law suit. The legal battle set in motion by Mike Tyson's tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill is still on-going, but the studio says it will change the tattoo to something less iconic when the film heads to DVD this December. “If the parties are unable to resolve their dispute, Warner Bros. does not intend to make any use of the allegedly infringing tattoo after the film ends its run in theaters because Warner Bros. will digitally alter the film to [...]
From front to back, The Hangover Part II is one big calculation. It seems to have run every single aspect of the first movie through a series of algorithms to determine just how much different — and how very, very, similar — the sequel should be to retain a target audience with no patience for new material, no taste for a new adventure and no desire to see a different movie than the one they paid to see in 2009.
Want a new plot that’s exactly the same? No problem. The guys are at Ed Helms’ wedding this time. Looking for a slightly more interesting location than Vegas? Boom, [...]
Just in case you thought there was a chance in dress-wearing-monkey hell this was going to go to happen, the Hangover Part II tattoo injunction has been dismissed, the judge ruling that Mike Tyson's face tattoo artist does not merit compensation from Warner Bros for copying his design. Sooooo let's all get them! I'll get mine…on both sides of my face!
