New Hangover Mind-Bogglingly Bad

If the first Hangover was a wild party, the second is, well, the hangover. Critics are savaging the latest effort from Todd Phillips:

• Writing in Salon, Andrew O’Hehir smacks the film’s “mind-boggling awfulness.” It’s a “clumsy, homophobic, cliché-ridden, and terminally unfunny sequel” that “takes dude comedy to its Sex and the City 2 nadir.” The guy who tried (and failed) to stop the film with a lawsuit was “accidentally trying to perform a public service.” (Read more of O'Hehir's fuming and funny review.)

• Part II “cleaves numbingly to the script of the previous movie,” notes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. “If you superimposed a diagram that mapped out all the narrative beats, characters, and jokes in The Hangover Part II over one for The Hangover, the two would align almost perfectly.”
• “The good news is that with three of the four guys married off and Alan not really knot-tying material, there is no need for more hangovers,” writes Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times.
• Dana Stevens sums it up in Slate: It’s a “blatant cash grab.”

(More The Hangover stories.)