Hangover II serves up stale laughs

“The Hangover Part II” is the ultimate tribute to laziness.

The creators of this film have essentially redone the first film while merely changing the scenery, so don’t expect anything new from “Part II.”

The “wolfpack” is back, with Ed Helms as jumpy as ever, Bradley Cooper at his jerkiest and Zach Galifianakis dialing up the crazy.

There’s another wedding; this time it is Ed Helms’ character getting married.
The only other difference between this film and the first film is that it takes place in Thailand.

As expected, the guys are once again drugged, do a bunch of crazy things and lose a member of their group. This time the one who goes missing is Helms’ brother-in-law to be. Their friend Doug is not included — he must be a real buzz kill.

The creators of this film seem to be aware that they haven’t created anything new, so their solution is just to make everything more extreme. Instead of losing a tooth, now Helms’ wakes up with a Mike Tyson-style facial tattoo.

Where the nudity was mostly isolated to a single penis, there are now two of them (one of which is quite a surprise).

Nobody lost any major body parts in the first film, so now someone has to lose a finger. And a human baby just won’t cut it for this film; a little monkey with a bad smoking habit is all that will suffice.
 
The defenders of this film will use a single argument in its favor: it was funny, therefore it must be good.

Yes, “The Hangover Part II” is funny, Galifianakis in particular. He is the only element carrying many of the scenes. Unfortunately, the film never really amounts to anything beyond cheap thrills. There are a lot of people who want nothing more than to laugh at a movie; maybe this will be the best thing they’ve seen all year.

The film does get a few things right. Bradley Cooper turns down his douchebag meter, and Ed Helms takes over the real center of the film. But those are small improvements adrift in a sea of stale jokes.

The first “Hangover” film was original and hilarious, mostly because it was something that hadn’t been done before. If only the creators of “Part II” had tried to create something equally innovative. It doesn’t look like they were that interested, so why should the audience be?