The Hangover

The Hangover is a gritty and side-splitting portrayal of one of the most chaotic and unforgettable nights of its characters' lives. The film kick-starts with a disorienting shot of a neon-lit Las Vegas landscape before suddenly transporting us to a crumpled state in the first place – a somewhat fuzzy recollection involving Phil Wenneck, a charming yet somewhat shallow high school teacher, Stu Price, a hapless dentist, and Alan Garner, their eccentric and awkward brother. The story thrusts itself forward when a wake-up call triggers a series of jumbled and disjointed feelings and recollections from the last night of their bachelor party. It becomes apparent that it's Doug's (the groom, henceforth forgotten) wedding day, and an infant lies mysteriously in the hotel room's closet, alongside a tiger in the bathroom which, as the day unravels, sparks a storm of theories. What a movie could possibly do was just encapsulate the bittersweet and chaotic reality of a friend's impending nuptials as he may be left out, despite it all being initially inextricably connected. Alan and the others awake to what could have been, but aren't quite sure about their lost memories. Their jaded look at how everything has culminated up to this point seems, unexpectedly profound. It was really with unbridled enthusiasm that Stu, Phil, and Alan decide they'll find Doug before he gets married. When their disorientation subsides, they begin a comically misplaced spree in an attempt to find their errant friend. After disentangling fragmented memories and vivid snippets of their nocturnal adventures, they attempt to piece together what, clearly and still irksomely occurred during that eventful night before they return to civilization. Their decision also gets influenced by the need to rescue their captive tiger from its temporary confines, even while also seeking to locate the missing groom before he gets hitched. It's a chaotic quest filled with dodged calls, attempted attempts at remembering anything from the night before, trips, time constraint, multiple visits to a med school room and each new possibility added new comedic highlights to an already excruciating situation as Stu narrates for what has transpired through unremarkable flashbacks whenever he reviews his own thoughts. Ultimately, the unshapened understanding from the start allows for better character development by getting multiple pieces explained simultaneously. However despite Doug still being absent and uncontactable, events develop in a fairly unlikely and unplanned fashion. One happens to witness a lot of people come to Doug's hotel room looking very much disheveled as if their entire day had mirrored theirs. Amid all the madness and tension building at speeds at which they are able to survive and keep up with the search, Phil stumbles into a brothel, almost being able to break through the confusion and manage to retrieve part of an understanding. In that scenario where clues to what Doug is up to become an 'additions' scenario from before he was left behind, and their trip finally unrolls after seeing it happen. Their frantic journey over a day becomes both raw and unforgettable as they start getting different elements pieced together piece-by-piece - with it being revealed that there's more to this than just Doug being in trouble – in a way that in their eyes, a pretty interesting game had actually been played out to accommodate all their activities – which made it possible for true reason behind everything being played as 'as they do'. In the midst of their ongoing ordeal, chaos, confusion and pure ignorance, perhaps, just perhaps the realization sets in, that life is all about making sense out of them things which most of the time have no pattern or co-ordination at all.