The Hangover

"The Hangover" features four men bonding on a bachelor party trip to Las Vegas, but it should not be mistaken for one of those bromances in the Judd Apatow oeuvre. There are no greater truths about friendship or life here, unless you count the hapless dentist's revelation that his live-in girlfriend is an utter shrew. It just provides 100 minutes of immature, offensive humor and sight gags, almost all of them marvelously funny.

Director Todd Phillips comes very close to parodying the bromance trend, starting with the casting of Justin Bartha as Doug, the groom who has the misfortune to be misplaced at his own bachelor party. Bartha, who had a memorably humiliating role as a mentally disabled kid in "Gigli," is a sweet-faced, short guy with dark hair who could pass for Apatow regular Paul Rudd in dim light, although he's far less quick on his feet. Doug's best buddies are sleazy, bitter schoolteacher Phil (Bradley Cooper, who has found his niche) and Stu (Ed Helms from "The Office"), a browbeaten dentist trying desperately to convince his controlling girlfriend that the party is in Napa rather than Vegas.

Doug's bride, Tracy (Sasha Barrese), has saddled them with her brother Alan for the trip to Vegas, with strict orders not to let him drink too much or gamble. "He's like a Gremlin," Phil says, eyeing Alan. "He comes with instructions and everything." Alan, it should be noted, is not allowed within 100 yards of any school or Chuck E. Cheese. He's played by Zach Galifianakis, a stand-up comedian whose brilliantly awful improvisations, including a bit with a baby, make Jonah Hill's "Superbad" performance seem like something that would be perfectly reasonable to share with your grandmother over a nice glass of sherry.

The movie lets us in on the punch line before the credits, when Phil calls the prospective bride to confess: At some point during that night in Vegas, Doug has been lost. The remaining three have no idea whether by choice or by chance, and begin a bleary-eyed investigation into their own doings. Watching Tracy's robotlike features -- Barrese seems fresh off the assembly line from the Megan Fox factory -- assume the position of annoyance, I might have guessed Doug disappeared by choice. But as the camera lovingly eyes the remarkable devastation of their hotel suite, it seems more likely he's passed out in a ditch somewhere. Or perhaps being digested by the tiger his buddies discover in their bathroom.

I'd feel guilty mentioning the tiger, since it's such a beautiful sight gag, if it hadn't already been revealed so prominently in the film's trailer. Indeed, I wondered, going into the movie, whether I'd seen all the best bits already, but was pleased to discover that there were plenty of fresh laughs. Many of these tend toward the mean or politically incorrect: In one quick scene, Galifianakis lets loose two deadpan jokes about verboten subjects: 9/11 and the mentally retarded, thereby hoisting the flag of comic defiance.

His boldness in regard to Bin Laden aside, Galifianakis' best jokes are physical, like the way he shakes out his hair in an impression of a cool guy (trust me, that's a stretch) or his mimicking of Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man. That's true of the film as a rule; for fans of silly slapstick, it's a dream, but those are fleeting pleasures. Helms is the closest thing "The Hangover" has got to a sympathetic character, and still, he's a few baubles short of a charm bracelet. Whenever the slapstick slows down, Phillips ("Old School" and "School for Scoundrels") cuts to visitor's bureau-style glam shots of Vegas and turns up the volume on a loud rap soundtrack. The former serves to remind you that the film is superficial enough to require filler, and the latter that you're watching the kind of fantasy peculiar to the white urban male who likes to play bad boy.

At the end of "The Hangover," it was hard not to notice, for instance, that all the women are whores (Heather Graham plays one with, naturally, a heart of gold), Barbie dolls or shrews. Conscious that I'd been almost helpless with laughter, but managed to register the insults to my gender, I said something slightly apologetic to my companion for the movie on the way out. After all, I'd howled away at several jokes that disparaged gay men, his demographic. "That's OK," he said, with the kind of down-home wisdom that puts it all in perspective. "I don't think they made themselves look particularly good either."

Also: On the Set of 'The Hangover'

Mary Pols is a Bay Area-based journalist. She reviews movies for Time.com and was for many years a film critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. She is also the author of a memoir, "Accidentally on Purpose," published in 2008 by Ecco/ Harper Collins. When she's inspired, usually by something weird, she blogs about it at www.maryfpols.com.