The Hangover: Critic Reviews

Ninety minutes of pure perverse laughter

The Hangover has scattered laughs (many in the cathartically funny end-credit montage), but overall it's more amusing than hilarious.

What hangover? This movie is safe as milk.

It turns out to be every bit as crass, offensive and incorrect as you'd expect, but it's also - gulp! - really very funny an awful lot of the time, as well as bizarrely gripping.

Though the film falters toward the end, The Hangover is a side-splitting adventure you'll still be laughing about the morning after.

Even though Apatow has no fingerprints over this movie, The Hangover follows in the same surprise-me tradition: It takes us to the dumb side but comes back with something unexpectedly affecting.

The latest in the wave of post-Judd Apatow Bad Lad comedies, The Hangover is rowdy, scurrilous, and, for about three-quarters of its running time, a lot more hilarious than it has any right to be.

An unusually palatable entry in a rancid genre.

Amusing as it is, it never feels real.

You're likely to hear all about it as friends and co-workers endlessly quote lines or re-create scenes.

Early in this unraveling adventure, a Vegas tourist quips, "Some guys just can't handle Vegas." Yeah, we know a couple: writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.

Now this is what I'm talkin' about. The Hangover is a funny movie, flat out, all the way through. Its setup is funny. Every situation is funny

The movie smells like a hit, but honestly: Helms excepted, did it need to be quite so blandly cast, or quite so lamely raunchy?

Waking up with a hangover and no memory of what happened the night before is an experience most people can relate to, but it's also a surefire device for comedy.

Phillips, with a script credited to Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (and with loads of loose-limbed interpretations from the cast), captures the amity among a group of grown men set loose without spouses, girlfriends, or sobriety to hinder them. (Or help.)

I'm going to say, at the risk of doing time in the blurbitentiary, that The Hangover is the Citizen Kane of bachelor party movies.

The Hangover, like the condition for which it's named, has some spirited moments, but more often it stumbles and slurs, regurgitating earlier pleasures and praying for the fog to lift.

Superbly cast, well-written and so silly it makes your teeth ache.

It's so funny it might convince you that sometimes the raunchy journey is worth the laugh-out-loud reward.

You might be embarrassed by laughing at some of the silliness, but don't be: Everyone else will be cracking up, too.

The Hangover is surprisingly clever as well as R-rated rowdy.

Memento meets Old School? It's party time.

It's hilarious in spurts and several bit players score, but the movie doesn't have enough momentum to carry it through the dead spots.

A strong cast, a quirky script with some unexpected twists and a steady hand from the director's chair make this a desert ride on the wild side a worthy road trip.