movie review - The Hangover, Part 3
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is the third in the series of the "The Hangover" movies. And whoever's creating these things has decided it's time to finally deal with the problem they created with Alan, the one who poisoned them all in the first movie. At the outset of this episode, the profoundly broken character Alan manages to accidentally kill both a giraffe and his own father. The plot makes sense in only the very roughest sense, with the hapless Doug being kidnapped by gangsters who want the rest of our "heroes" to find Mr. Chow, the larger-than-life Chinese crook with whom they've somehow crossed paths with each proceeding Hangover. Anyway, madness ensues and it seems that someone's learned a lesson from the second one because a) this is obviously different and b) things definitely work better with this outing, with the characters actually behaving like characters and not like mouthpieces for their lines.
I have to say, I think they handled the development of Alan's character with more authenticity than you'd see in supposedly character-driven stuff like the super-hero movies. Of course, those really only just parade their characters, they don't development them. But watching this, for instance, I thought, "They're doing this better than Lucas did with Anakin Skywalker."
Recommended. But, be ready.