The Hangover 2

The expectations for the sequel to The Hangover really couldn't have been higher, considering how beloved the original is. Before you see the film, I advise that you severely lower the bar for The Hangover Part II, because it is, unfortunately, a shadow of its predecessor. In the second film, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), Doug (Justin Bartha) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) are headed to a wedding and want to have one last bachelor party hurrah before one of them gets married. Sound familiar? It should. The plot is exactly the same as the first movie.

Sure, there are some tweaks. This time, it's Stu that's getting married, and the boys are all headed to Thailand for the event. When the guys decide to have a low-key night before the wedding, they toast their beer bottles . . . and then wake up the next morning in Bangkok with absolutely no memory of the previous evening. They spend the rest of the movie piecing together the details of the night so they can locate a missing member of their group.

The Hangover Part II is a retread that's so close to the original, you wonder if the writers doubted its audience's intelligence or were just too lazy to come up with something new. Either way, the movie and its signature wolf pack still get laughs, but it's lacking the magic that made the original Hangover an instant classic. To see what else I thought, just read more

The Hangover Part II opens in theaters today, and if your fiancé's BFF is planning a weekend to remember like you'd find in the movies, remember one thing: someone always gets lost. Don't let your boys turn out like the Wolf Pack and lose a member of your wedding party — send them on their way knowing you've outfitted them with the latest in GPS tracking technology. It's not spying if it's saving a life . . . or wedding.

• Zoombak Personal GPS Locator — Never lose your guys when they're outfitted with the Zoombak personal GPS device. Initially, these babies were made for your pups to wear so you could always find them when they escape the yard, but the lineup's been expanded to include people and things like backpacks, laptops, anything you want to know the location of. Not recommended for snooping spouses, just concerned brides-to-be.
• PocketFinder — This tiny GPS locator is waterproof and small enough to fit in your shirt pocket, and it can relay GPS coordinates to your home computer, cell phone, or land line.
• Find My Phone — If your man's got an iPhone and gets separated from the party group, tell the guys to log in to his Find My Phone feature. This handy tool locates his device via another linked laptop or iPad, and easily tells them where he (or his phone) can be found. Of course, you'll have to activate the service before the bachelor party in order for this plan to work.

We're just a couple weeks away from The Hangover Part II, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2009 comedy that made Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galifiankis household names. There's a lot riding on the second part of their story, and the guys sat down with Entertainment Weekly with director Todd Phillipps to talk about the perils of shooting in Thailand and why they'll always keep coming back for more Hangovers.

• Galifianakis on the script: "I remember thumbing through it, going, 'Oh God. Oh God.'"
• Cooper on filming in Bangkok: "It was the hardest shoot I’ve ever done for sure. Nothing ever even came close to it. I thought A-Team was brutal: I got injured and it was f*cking ing six months of . . . not even close! One criticism you could never make about this movie is that we just phoned it in. Even if it fails miserably, it’s not for lack of trying."
• On making the sequel out of love for each other:
  BC: "There’s no other reason. If anything, why would you do it? There’s more downside than upside."
  Phillips: "You can’t beat what you’ve done. You can only lose in this position. But we just love hanging out with each other."
  Helms: [Laughs] "We’re going to be ramming Hangovers down America’s throat for the next three decades."