The Hangover (Todd Phillips)

[megladon8]

No, but come on, are you saying there aren't any losers at Comi-Con? That seems like a stretch.


There are losers everywhere. Check your local porn theatre.

And no, I wasn't saying that at all.

[baby doll]

There are losers everywhere. Check your local porn theatre.

And no, I wasn't saying that at all.I didn't know there still were porn theatres.

[Rowland]

There are losers everywhere. Check your local porn theatre.Oh, you don't have to look that far. But on that same token, I try to exert enough empathy to avoid blanket terms like "loser."

And I still think this movie was mucho lame. You people are crazy. :P

[baby doll]

But on that same token, I try to exert enough empathy to avoid blanket terms like "loser."If the shoe fits, I say wear it. Besides, what other epithet should I be shouting at grown-ups when I see them reading a Harry Potter book on the bus?

[megladon8]

If the shoe fits, I say wear it. Besides, what other epithet should I be shouting at grown-ups when I see them reading a Harry Potter book on the bus?


ComicCon > calling people losers for reading something you're not interested in

[trotchky]

I strongly disagree. But let's look at this: If instead of becoming grownups, the characters continue to be friends, don't move out of their parents' houses, never get laid, and regularly attend Comi-Con... Well, that's what you call being a loser.

Maybe I should have said, the adult world as dictated by the adults who run it blows. The comparative independence and empathy and intellectual curiosity that (hopefully) comes with maturation is great; putting away childish things for the sake of conforming to some misguided notion of what it means to be grown-up...maybe not so much? As Nietzsche put it, "Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play." Or, jeez, read American Psycho if you want to see how fucked the status symbols and mores and manners of the Professional Adult World can be.

[trotchky]

ComicCon > calling people losers for reading something you're not interested in

Yeah. You're basically rendering value judgments on people for their lifestyle choices, baby doll, and that's not cool, for a variety of reasons. One of them being that a person's lifestyle doesn't mean shit with regards to their character (with the obvious exception of extreme cases like a guy who spends his life murdering people for fun).

[MacGuffin]

Amdittedly

Oh my god. baby doll has now: 1) used an emoticon, 2) mispelled a word. What is this world coming to?

[baby doll]

Oh my god. baby doll has now: 1) used an emoticon, 2) mispelled a word. What is this world coming to?Everybody knows that amdittedly is a perfectly cromulent word.

[baby doll]

ComicCon > calling people losers for reading something you're not interested inIt's a kid's book. Grownups should want to read something a little more demanding.

[MacGuffin]

Everybody knows that amdittedly is a perfectly cromulent word.

Ha! Touché.

[baby doll]

Maybe I should have said, the adult world as dictated by the adults who run it blows. The comparative independence and empathy and intellectual curiosity that (hopefully) comes with maturation is great; putting away childish things for the sake of conforming to some misguided notion of what it means to be grown-up...maybe not so much? As Nietzsche put it, "Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play." Or, jeez, read American Psycho if you want to see how fucked the status symbols and mores and manners of the Professional Adult World can be.Don't get me wrong, I liked Spider-Man comics when I was ten, but I outgrew it. Not to conform to anything, I'm just not interested. I'm much more into chocolate cake, milk, and nerdy Jewish girls, and my response to Spider-Man 2 reflects that.

[The Mike]

It's a kid's book. Grownups should want to read something a little more demanding.
Dude....

Just dude. :lol:

[Amnesiac]

If the shoe fits, I say wear it. Besides, what other epithet should I be shouting at grown-ups when I see them reading a Harry Potter book on the bus?

WTF? :) What a bitter and strange thing to say. And you've gone out of your way to repeat it in more than one thread as if this is some monumental chip on your shoulder. Honestly, who cares if a grown-up is reading Harry Potter? Yet you care enough to repeatedly kvetch about it as if you are the arbiter on 'grown-up' reading tastes, which I personally find more strange than some grown-up who might want to see what all the fuss is about or just finds something charming or appealing about the books. And how does that automatically preclude them from caring about other more legitimate or complex works (AKA the stuff you personally think they should be reading)? I agree that people should expand their horizons but it's kind of curiously hateful to call some random 'grown-up' reading a Harry Potter book a loser.

And to preemptively dodge any babydoll-esque extrapolations, I've only ever read one Harry Potter book and that was way back when the first one came out.

[baby doll]

WTF? :) What a bitter and strange thing to say. And you've gone out of your way to repeat it in more than one thread as if this is some monumental chip on your shoulder. Honestly, who cares if a grown-up is reading Harry Potter? Yet you care enough to repeatedly kvetch about it as if you are the arbiter on 'grown-up' reading tastes, which I personally find more strange than some grown-up who might want to see what all the fuss is about or just finds something charming or appealing about the books. And how does that automatically preclude them from caring about other more legitimate or complex works (AKA the stuff you personally think they should be reading)? I agree that people should expand their horizons but it's kind of curiously hateful to call some random 'grown-up' reading a Harry Potter book a loser.

And to preemptively dodge any babydoll-esque extrapolations, I've only ever read one Harry Potter book and that was way back when the first one came out.Did you guys think I was joking, or do you think I actually shout "Loser!" at strangers I see reading Harry Potter books in public?

[Amnesiac]

Did you guys think I was joking, or do you think I actually shout "Loser!" at strangers I see reading Harry Potter books in public?

What? Why are you diverting this into some nonsensical situation where everyone here took your claim literally? Of course that's not the case.

While this is obvious, your point of view seems no less bitter or strange.

[baby doll]

What? Why are you diverting this into some nonsensical situation where everyone here took your claim literally? Of course that's not the case.

While this is obvious, your point of view seems no less bitter or strange.My point of view is that life is too short to read a seven hundred page book about tween wizards while a single work of Kakfa, Wharton, or Woolf still eludes me.

[Amnesiac]

My point of view is that life is too short to read a seven hundred page book about tween wizards while a single work of Kakfa, Wharton, or Woolf still eludes me.

Okay, this is just a toned down version of your earlier statement sans hatefulness and still carrying the assumption that reading Harry Potter precludes some more 'complex' reading that carries the babydoll seal of approval. And I'm so not getting into a long-winded argument about the seconds, the minutes, the hours in a lifetime and how to properly make use of them all so don't bother going down that path. Instead, try and learn how to divorce your vehement personal interests from that of others without making hateful and declarative claims on what 'type' of person they may be simply because they spent a small portion of their life (quick, cite Potter page numbers and try and refute this statement!) reading Harry Potter, which may give them a modicum of innocent joy or happiness. Even if your comment was half-heartedly sardonic, it is still a really stupid thing to go out of your way to say (more than once, in this case). Or don't make any effort to change this habit. I don't care in the end, I just instantly found your attitude strange and kind of unnecessarily repugnant.

[Spinal]

I thought the Harry Potter comment was funny. I also don't understand the universal obsession.

[Amnesiac]

I also don't understand the universal obsession.

I did not find it funny. In regards to this part of your post, it comes across as much more civil and, well, normal, than arrogantly dismissing those who partake in this universal obsession (regardless of its ostensibly questionable merit) as unequivocal losers.

[Spinal]

I did not find it funny. In regards to this part of your post, it comes across as much more civil and, well, normal, than arrogantly dismissing those who partake in this universal obsession (regardless of its ostensibly questionable merit) as unequivocal losers.

I do tire of friends who expect me to share their enthusiasm over the latest book or film release. At the same time, most of them are also people who I would not be surprised to see with Kafka in their hands on a different day. There's time in life for both popular and high-brow entertainment. The person who avoids one is just as tedious as the person who avoids the other.

That is why I love The Hangover. It's top quality superficial entertainment.

[megladon8]

I do tire of friends who expect me to share their enthusiasm over the latest book or film release. At the same time, most of them are also people who I would not be surprised to see with Kafka in their hands on a different day. There's time in life for both popular and high-brow entertainment. The person who avoids one is just as tedious as the person who avoids the other.


...which is exactly why babydoll's comment was ridiculous.

[BuffaloWilder]

That is pretty ridiculous, baby doll.

Codswallop.

[Spinal]

...which is exactly why babydoll's comment was ridiculous.

Only if you take it 100% seriously.

[trotchky]

My point of view is that life is too short to read a seven hundred page book about tween wizards while a single work of Kakfa, Wharton, or Woolf still eludes me.

Wharton is a hack fyi.

[baby doll]

Wharton is a hack fyi.Maybe when I'm more well read than I am now, I'll come to see things that way (as I now no longer regard Michael Crichton as the height of English literature, as I did when I was in the sixth grade), but for now, I'm still enough of a philistine to think that the two books I've read of hers (The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence) were super awesome.

[Dead & Messed Up]

My point of view is that life is too short to read a seven hundred page book about tween wizards while a single work of Kakfa, Wharton, or Woolf still eludes me.

Well then, hurry up and finish those authors so you can get to delivery owls, house elves, and sneetches.

[Dukefrukem]

Well then, hurry up and finish those authors so you can get to delivery owls, house elves, and sneetches.

:lol:

I haven't yet chimed in on this discussion, but I've been enjoying read it. Life is too short. We should all watch the Bucket List right now.

[NickGlass]

That's all well and good, but comedy isn't dependent on some kind of risk-reward equation. Not much is evidently at stake in movies like Slacker and Smiley Face; doesn't stop them from being hysterical. If not much happens, who cares? The sheer inanity of the characters' goals in Superbad is certainly part of what makes it funny.

Isn't Smiley Face all about constantly having something at stake?

[baby doll]

Well then, hurry up and finish those authors so you can get to delivery owls, house elves, and sneetches.I think after that I'll check out Dickens, Faulkner, and Tolstoy, just to see what all the fuss is about.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I think after that I'll check out Dickens, Faulkner, and Tolstoy, just to see what all the fuss is about.

You are the stuff tweedy college professors are made of.

;)

[Sycophant]

There's a difference between reading Harry Potter on the bus and believing that Rowling is the best author who ever picked up a pen. I'd encourage anyone who believes the latter should probably expand their horizons, but I'm not convinced it's terribly alarming either.

[baby doll]

There's time in life for both popular and high-brow entertainment. The person who avoids one is just as tedious as the person who avoids the other.I hadn't really thought of the issue in terms of high and low culture, since after going to art school for four years, the conclusion I came to was that, so far as the art world is concerned, film isn't an art (but mass culture), and never will be. Then again, I suppose the implication of the term "mass culture"--soap operas, comic books, fashion magazines--is that it's for the illiterate masses.

[Fezzik]

I hadn't really thought of the issue in terms of high and low culture, since after going to art school for four years, the conclusion I came to was that, so far as the art world is concerned, film isn't an art (but mass culture), and never will be. Then again, I suppose the implication of the term "mass culture"--soap operas, comic books, fashion magazines--is that it's for the illiterate masses.


The implication is part of the problem, if not the majority of it. The people I hang out with are all pretty intelligent folk. Among them, there are lovers of comic book and fashion magazines (I don't know about soap operas), but these same people also enjoy deeper entertainments.

There seems to be a desire in the "culture" community to have a strong line of delineation between genres, like a barbed wire fence.

It's part fanboyism, but also stems from the "I'm special because this is mine and not yours" attitude.

It's amazing how a lot of people don't understand how one could enjoy George R. R. Martin, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Stan Lee, J.K. Rowling and Pat Conroy...

...or that someone could enjoy the Transformers films and still turn around and revel in something like Adventureland.

Everyone has to be "right." Everyone has to champion something. As a result, stuff that isn't championed is denigrated.

Our system of politics has bled into our passion of entertainment. It sickens me.

[Amnesiac]

There's a difference between reading Harry Potter on the bus and believing that Rowling is the best author who ever picked up a pen.

I like how babydoll's utterly inane comments force people to say the most obvious things ever as if they stand as some sort of shocking revelation. :lol:

[BuffaloWilder]

I hadn't really thought of the issue in terms of high and low culture, since after going to art school for four years, the conclusion I came to was that, so far as the art world is concerned, film isn't an art (but mass culture), and never will be. Then again, I suppose the implication of the term "mass culture"--soap operas, comic books, fashion magazines--is that it's for the illiterate masses.



























:SIGH:

[Mara]

Wharton is a hack fyi.

Hey, there. Let's not talk crazy.

[Mara]

Wait, why am I in this thread? I think I clicked on the wrong thread. I know nothing about this film.

My above comment stands, though.

[baby doll]

It's amazing how a lot of people don't understand how one could enjoy George R. R. Martin, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Stan Lee, J.K. Rowling and Pat Conroy...

...or that someone could enjoy the Transformers films and still turn around and revel in something like Adventureland.Just to be one hundred percent clear, are you saying that Adventureland is some kind of rarefied art movie? I haven't seen it, but my general impression was that it's a standard teen comedy Ã* la Superbad.

[Sycophant]

Fezzik is saying that Adventureland is a good, artistically sound film. I agree. Some don't.

If you're actually interested in what people think of the film, I think there's a thread somewhere, and it is in many of our top tens for '09.

[trotchky]

Isn't Smiley Face all about constantly having something at stake?

Yeah, you're right. Bad example.

[baby doll]

Fezzik is saying that Adventureland is a good, artistically sound film. I agree. Some don't.

If you're actually interested in what people think of the film, I think there's a thread somewhere, and it is in many of our top tens for '09.Okay, I guess that makes sense. What I thought he meant was that to be able to appreciate both was the sign of a truly eclectic and open-minded moviegoer. But if your interpretation is correct, then isn't making no distinction between "a good, artistically sound film" and its opposite (tell me if I'm reading too much into your statement) the sign of some one who's merely indiscriminate? It's one thing to say that The Hangover is an exemplary guy-oriented comedy, but it's quite another to say that all guy-oriented comedies are equally fabulous. Or that there's no difference at all between The Hangover and La dolce vita (hey, they're both movies about wild parties).

[eternity]

Just to be one hundred percent clear, are you saying that Adventureland is some kind of rarefied art movie? I haven't seen it, but my general impression was that it's a standard teen comedy Ã* la Superbad.
Adventureland and Superbad are quite different movies. After the first half hour or so, there isn't a laugh in the thing. Trailers and advertisements are a deceptive art.

[baby doll]

Adventureland and Superbad are quite different movies. After the first half hour or so, there isn't a laugh in the thing. Trailers and advertisements are a deceptive art.Okay, I've read Roger Ebert's review and have upgraded my general impression: it sounds like a standard teen movie Ã* la Superbad on downers. It could be watchable, I guess, but I'm still not interested in seeing it.

[Fezzik]

My point was not to say 'see this movie,' it was to say 'why can't someone like good, well made films AND mindless junk once in a while?'

Just because someone occasionally enjoys the idiotic pleasures of a pointless entertainment does not make them part of 'the illiterate masses,' any more than liking Godard, Fellini, etc makes one enlightened.

[baby doll]

My point was not to say 'see this movie,' it was to say 'why can't someone like good, well made films AND mindless junk once in a while?'

Just because someone occasionally enjoys the idiotic pleasures of a pointless entertainment does not make them part of 'the illiterate masses,' any more than liking Godard, Fellini, etc makes one enlightened.I was going to say that the important thing is to learn to tell the difference between good mindless junk and bad mindless junk, but then it occurred to me that mindless junk is, by definition, junk. And the film I was going to use as an example of good mindless junk, The Hangover, isn't mindless junk at all; it's simply a good, well made film.

From what I've read about Transformers 2 (Ebert's one-star review), it doesn't sound like there's any pleasure to be had at all, idiotic or otherwise. He describes it as a loud, ugly, stupid, monotonous assault on the senses, and I've yet to hear any persuasive counter-arguments. (Indeed, as far as Ebert's concerned, the matter is closed and there's no intelligent debate to be had--as if he were talking about global warming.) But perhaps by "idiotic pleasure," you mean the pleasure of recognizing that the film unspooling before you (or rather, behind you) is idiotic, which in my experience is no pleasure at all. If you want real idiotic pleasure, you should check out Fellini's Amarcord, which I saw on the big screen in Montréal; the audience I saw it with was in stitches throughout because of all the jokes about farting, pissing, and masturbation.

[number8]

Jesus, this thread is just drowning in sanctimonious bullshit. Someone open a window.

[Grouchy]

the audience I saw it with was in stitches throughout because of all the jokes about farting, pissing, and masturbation.
Well, Amarcord is a funny movie. Those jokes are funny. I don't know why people shouldn't laugh with it.

Anyway, I saw this recently. Pretty much what everyone is saying - an intelligent comedy with good characters.

[Bosco B Thug]

The Hangover was going pretty strong for me... that is, until the hangover part came in.

I thought it was all pretty uninspired. Even Baby Mama had some surprises and subversion... but I guess that goes with that having a premise while this is just a f*ck-all meant to be inanely debaucherous.

As for the whole thing about the film being noxious and hazardous on a moral level, I really liked the in-between the film found making the characters unabashed caricatures of un-PC male-ness - weird for me to say it, but it made it feel alright to just roll with their fantasy adventure in its inconsequentiality. Bradley Cooper's character, particularly, was somewhat a revelation - a character I should hate, but who is consistently played with a sort of flair embodying the whole bonhomie thing that the film's pretty much all about, so that I actually enjoyed him.

Otherwise, the film is saved by the performances and awesome one-liners and kaput, that's pretty much it.

[Adam]

As for the whole thing about the film being noxious and hazardous on a moral level, I really liked the in-between the film found making the characters unabashed caricatures of un-PC male-ness - weird for me to say it, but it made it feel alright to just roll with their fantasy adventure in its inconsequentiality

Ha, so you're saying it was obnoxious in such a way so that it transcended its own hatefulness? I can buy that and I still could've like the movie if only it was remotely funny. Seriously, I didn't see this thing all that long ago and I can barely remember anything about it. Can somebody who last watched The Hangover back when I did (over the summer) quote even a single clever/memorable line or moment? I wasn't offended by the film's moral compass or anything silly like that, but I still don't get what all the fuss was about

[Ezee E]

Ha, so you're saying it was obnoxious in such a way so that it transcended its own hatefulness? I can buy that and I still could've like the movie if only it was remotely funny. Seriously, I didn't see this thing all that long ago and I can barely remember anything about it. Can somebody who last watched The Hangover back when I did (over the summer) quote even a single clever/memorable line or moment? I wasn't offended by the film's moral compass or anything silly like that, but I still don't get what all the fuss was about
There's plenty of quotable lines that I hear from people all the time now.

[number8]

It's very quotable, though perhaps not with words. Like, everytime I see a baby, I make it jack off and I would laugh.

Before getting arrested.

[Bosco B Thug]

Ha, so you're saying it was obnoxious in such a way so that it transcended its own hatefulness? Not so much transcended as established its hatefulness as the joke itself. There's a telling moment, when, before we even meet the character, the father character played by Jeffrey Tambor tells the groom not to let Bradley Cooper's character drive the car because he doesn't like him. We're given no reason to like the characters, just enjoy and be amused by them.

But for every "Jackin his little weenus" and Galfiniakis' wolf pack toast, there's something that's fckin stupid that falls completely flat like Stu's tiger song and discussing the name "roofies."

[Dukefrukem]

Do you know if the hotel is pager friendly?

[Benny Profane]

It sucks when comedies aren't funny. Good lord this was stupid. Waste of time.

[Morris Schæffer]

It sucks when comedies aren't funny. Good lord this was stupid. Waste of time.

Good comedies are a rare breed these days. I thought this was certainly better than most.

What are some comedies of the past three years that you really dug?

[Yxklyx]

One of the funniest films I've seen in a very long time. Just plain awesome in every respect!