The Hangover, Up

I don't feel like writing two different reviews and the idea of doing a combo review of two films that would make up the most incongruous double feature ever seemed like the way to do.

First The Hangover. The recent trend of producing big R-rated studio comedies has been pretty hit or miss for me. For every one I find funny (Stepbrothers, Role Models, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers), there's at least two that I find tiresome, or weakly amusing at best (Old School, Forty Year Old Virgin, Van Wilder, The American Pie films). Thankfully The Hangover, while not a home run by any means, falls closer to the former camp. The story revolves a group of cliches, I mean characters, who go to Vegas for a bachelor party and wake up the next morning having lost the groom and with no recollection of what happened the night before. They spend the rest of the film trying to find him and piece together their night. Along the way they run into Mile Tyson. There's not much more to be said.

The film generally works when it lets its characters, particularly Zach Galifianakis (who deserves all the props hes been getting recently) play off eachother and generally behave badly. It has its share of jokes that don't work, but I actually laughed out loud at least five or six times (or roughly half as much as I did during Pearl Harbor) which is pretty good. The film makes the common mistake of trying to have the chracters learn life lessons after having spent the entire runtime making them seem like pretty reprehensible (and therefore funny) characters, but its not enough of a mis-step to kill my enjoyment. Anyway overall its not a great pice of work, but an above average example of this type of film.

I don't necessarily consider Up and above average film of its type, but that's only because Pixar has set the bar so high that if a film doesn't blow you out of the water it feels dissapointing. Don't think this means that I don't recommend Up, far from it. The film follows an old man (voice dby Ed Asner) whose wife has recently died. Rather than being forced into an retirement home he fits his house with hundreds of balloons and sets off to fly to the hidden 'Paradise Falls' in South America that he and his wife always dreamed of going to. He's joined by a stowaway cub scout and adventure ensues.

Even though its not perfect the film has some really nice aspects. The film-makers are able to paint a fully realized picture of a couples life together in a five minute wordless montage, and it sets to shame hundreds of conventional hollywood films who try to do the same thing. The two main characters are also fully realized, and their interactions are feel natural and not at all obnoxious (as little kid old people relationships are so often portayed). The film loses steam when they actually get to South America and run into a possibly crazed explorer (voiced by Christopher Plummer) but overall it maintains a nice light tone that keeps the momentum going for most of the running time. It really is impressive that even for one of their lesser entries, Pixar is able to churn out something that is more engaging than what 70% of other studio's put out.

Anyway I think you can check both of these out with minimal trepidation. If you do them as a double feature with a some little kids you're forced into babysitting - Even better