Hey folks, Harry here... still recouping, but man... I'd have loved to have been in La Mesa, CA for this Test Screening of THE HANGOVER Part 2. I was incredibly late on covering the first film. Seemed that everyone in the world saw it before me. Life conspired against me, and when I finally saw it - two weeks after release in Las Vegas with Yoko... I suddenly got why everyone fell in love. The original film was the shit. Now - I have to admit, when I got the following report from the film, I was terrified of massive spoilers... finding out about every cameo... a ton of gags ruined, but luckily this scoopster, decided to be considerate about how he'd write about the film. Making sure that we would be teased, but not spoiled. That tends to be my favorite type of early preview reviews.
Hey! So I live in La Mesa, CA which is just outside of San Diego. Last week my friend and I were approached and asked if we'd like to attend a free screening of a "new comedy coming out later this year". We don't get a lot of screenings out here so we were kind of psyched. We asked who was in it? The woman inviting us had no clue. She genuinely didn't know. We were just hoping this wasn't going to be some Rob Schnieder Shit Show.
We show up to the theater on Thursday night and there was a pretty big line. Everyone was holding their blue invitations but no one knew what the movie was. They were asking questions to certain people on line and then pulling them off line. It was pretty funny. We looked around and saw no one in suits (outside of the security guards) and figured this must not be a big studio movie.
When we finally got in to the theater the guy comes out and tells us that he has good news and bad news. The good news was that the movie we were about to see was THE HANGOVER PART 2. Everyone went crazy! Loud hooting and hollering!! I looked around and saw Todd Phillips standing on the side of the theater, alone. There were no studio guys around him. It was actually kind of weird. By the way, the bad news was that we couldn't tell anyone we saw it! (whoops). We were sworn to secrecy as apparently they had just finished filming the movie and this was the VERY FIRST PUBLIC SCREENING.
Anyway, on to the movie. IT ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ROCKED.
It is similar to the first one in some ways, except it totally ups the insanity level. It is seriously one of the most fucked up studio comedies to ever be made. I am not even sure how much of what we saw will actually be in the ultimate release, because some of it seemed just too crazy.
It opens in a similar way, Phil makes a call, he's on the roof of a skyscraper. Says we fucked up. Apologizes. The crowd went crazy. And then it cuts to a week earlier where we learn that Stew is getting married to a new girl, her parents are from Thailand and the wedding is at some resort over there. Stew is still "emotionally scarred" from what happened 2 years ago in Vegas. Alan (Zack Galafinakis) is not invited to the wedding and is really upset about it. Phil and Doug end up convincing Stew to invite him.
The truth is I don't want to spoil what happens over there. Here is what I will say. The guys (and there wives) go to some beautiful Thailand resort. The guys make a toast and Phil, Stew and Alan wake up in Bangkok the next morning. More fucked up and more fucked over than you can imagine. And just to put all the rumors to rest: THEY DO NOT LOSE DOUG. He is safe and sound back at the resort. But, like the first one, they don't remember what happened. Also like the first one, it ends up all making sense.
But before it ties up, the guys get put through some pretty unbelievable shit. The highlights for me: 1. A drug dealing monkey who smokes cigarettes. 2. Mr. Chow is back and better than ever. 3. A car chase through Bangkok. 4. Stew and his dark side are revealed through a beautiful girl they met the night before. 5. Alan's fucked up flashback. I'm being vague on purpose, you will thank me later.
The crowd I saw it with were going crazy. I kept looking over at Todd Phillips who was by himself sitting on the floor in the aisle. He was watching the audience and never really looked up at the screen. He must have been pretty happy with how it played. It was definitely an early cut, there were some slow parts and some things that seemed "unfinished" but overall I loved it. On the way out my friend and I were discussing if it was actually better than the first one. He thought it was. I thought it was close but probably the first one. The audience seemed to like this better than the audience I saw the first one with, but maybe that was just because we were the first to see it and we didn't know what movie to expect.
Oh, and one other thing. They have photos at the end. You may want to stick around. EPIC.
If you use this just call me THE WOLF'S SACK.
