15 Pointless Movie Sequels That Just Copied The Original

3. The Hangover Part II

The Original: A group of four friends celebrate the impending nuptials of one of their clan, Doug (Justin Bartha), but when Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) wake up from a hard night of partying, Doug is nowhere to be found and nobody has any memory of the madness that took place the night before. The Sequel: Much like Home Alone 2, The Hangover Part II has the almost admirable audacity to take a singular, highly improbable premise and inflict it upon the same group of people for a second go-around. This time, it's Stu getting married (like it matters), and the same drunken night leads to the same missing memories and the same attempt to figure out what happened. The second time however lacks the hilarious no-holds-barred feel of the first film, and the darker tone makes a lot of the humour feel needlessly mean-spirited. Of course, it again ends with the gang looking at a camera roll of the night's previously-unknown events, and erasing the evidence after doing so. Above all else, The Hangover Part II is proof that having your characters recognising that the same thing is happening to them again isn't enough to cover up for originality. Self-awareness isn't just a blanket filmmakers can use to paper over their own laziness (though with its $568 million box office haul, perhaps it is). The third movie, The Hangover Part III, did at least deviate from this formula, even though it ironically ended up being even worse than Part II.