Trying to Capture Lightning in an Alcohol Bottle.

“I can’t believe this is happening again!” Ed Helms says in THE HANGOVER PART 2. You and us both, Ed.

This movie’s predecessor THE HANGOVER (2009) was not unique, but worked so well because it embraced a kind of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND willful acceptance of its outlandish premise of stranding a clutch of hooligans and forcing them to find their way home against a ticking clock. It worked so well… they decided to use it again.

Copy and paste. Change slug line from EXT. LAS VEGAS to EXT. BANGKOK. Presto! Sequel! Funding!

Uh, guys… generations have not birthed and died; the Earth’s axial tilt has not reversed poles, and the same people who saw THE HANGOVER probably own a Blu-Ray copy of it that has not even been pushed to the back of the shelf yet. So why are we paying to watch the same movie again?

The “Wolf Pack” returns: unfunny Ed Helms as Stu, sexpot Bradley Cooper as Phil and Zach Galifianakis as dimwit Alan; even beige and uninteresting Justin Bartha returns as Doug to continue being beige and uninteresting.

Stu is getting married in Thailand, native land of his bride-to-be (Jamie Chung) and her brother Teddy (Mason Lee), and invites the pack along to celebrate his last night as a bachelor…

And then this movie – in unbridled audacity – rolls out the same gags we saw in THE HANGOVER: a quiet toast raising their glasses – check. Pan up from principals into the night sky – check. Principals wake in trashed hotel room with a hangover – check. Alan’s head is shaved, Stu has a Tyson-esque face tattoo, Doug and Teddy are missing and a monkey chitters about with Teddy’s finger. And no one remembers anything.

Except us. We remember THE HANGOVER.

Ken Jeong appears as Mr Chow, an elf-like demonic sprite so high on crack the script almost became original. But hang on – that’s how he made his appearance in THE HANGOVER too. And he was naked there. So much for ‘original.’ Before stopping his heart with a massive bump, he ominously offers advice on Teddy’s whereabouts: “Bangkok has him now…”

On with the plagiarism: checking their pockets for clues – check. The missing person confused for someone else – check. Stu has a ladyboy prostitute – check. Mike Tyson – check. End by looking at photos of their lost night on a camera – check.

Only redeeming factor is Galifianakis, whose dimwitted Alan is still confused enough to be funny in places. Even Bradley Cooper’s chest couldn’t save this movie. Ed Helms should just admit that he’s not a comedian and join an accounting firm. And Justin Bartha should go back to being Nicolas Cage’s bottom bitch.

And now: that finger. Teddy’s finger has been cut off, half the movie spent on its recovery, and everyone – including Teddy – seems pretty calm about it when the Happy Ending Flow Chart reunites everyone. When the Wolf Pack finds Teddy, his hand bandaged, I was expecting the first words out of Teddy’s mouth to be, “Where’s my motherfucking finger?!” But everyone’s just happy and gay. Ironically, the movie is giving us the finger. The writers themselves made Teddy a cellist – not a politician or truck driver or office manager, where the loss of a finger might not even matter – No, he’s a MUSICIAN, where the re-attachment of even a mildly inefficient digit will derail his career. Barring exceptional examples like Tony Iommi losing the tips of two fingers, or Rick Allen losing his arm and somehow struggling back to virtuoso status, how can everyone be so blissfully blasé about Teddy’s chopped-off finger?

The original HANGOVER was so good because the protagonists were victims; they weren’t willful drunks or troublemakers, and were only reacting to their out of control situation. We feel less empathy for HANGOVER 2 because though the characters themselves aren’t to blame, we clearly feel the venal hand of the filmmakers (director/co-writer Todd Phillips, and writers Craig Mazin, and Scot Armstrong) willfully putting them in this situation, and willfully making them troublemakers, merely to squeeze revenue from a tried and true formula. Have we learned nothing from the decades of inferior sequels spat at us from the maw of Hollywood?

I can’t believe this is happening again!

END

SEMI-PRO is Mostly Amateur.

Will Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon in SEMI-PRO, the owner-coach-player of Flint Michigan basketball team, the Tropics, last place in their local Basketball Association. When the Association accepts a merger with the NBA, they threaten to drop the Tropics from their roster, so in order to make his team’s NBA dreams come true, Jackie Moon must attempt to do the impossible: make a Will Ferrell movie that is funny.

Scot Armstrong (OLD SCHOOL) writes a movie that will neither appeal to fans of comedy or basketball, and Kent Alterman (an executive producer turned director with this debut) should have kept his former job.

As Jackie Moon tries to rally his team into a mean machine, the gags, the stunts, the promotions, the interpersonal relationships are all over the place; it’s not cohesive. Semi-Pro refers to athletes who are paid, but must also have other jobs to supplement their income. SEMI-PRO looks like it was made by a production crew in the same boat; the tone of the movie keeps shifting with each scene. Nothing works. The movie is a mess!

Ferrell is surrounded by regular compatriots, Will Arnett, David Koechner, Andrew Daly and Andy Richter (the Rob Schneider of Will Ferrell movies). Andre Benjamin (OutKast) is ubercool as a Tropics player who invents the Alley-Oop, Woody Harrelson is a washed-up player trying to make a comeback (does anyone remember this guy was in the kinetic WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP?), Rob Corddry is a fan who worships Woody so enthusiastically that he relishes his own wife (Maura Tierney) rekindling her affair with him, and Will Ferrell shoots for another absurdist hoop and misses.

END