5. The Hangover Part II - Phil And Stu
This one's like taking candy from a baby. To all those who've spent even one iota of time researching The Hangover II, you'll know they basically just rehashed the original and set it in a different place. I guess I can see the logic behind that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and some people like their films to be new but familiar. Yet a vocal majority were unhappy with The Hangover II, precisely for the reasons above. Simply put, it didn't seem as if as much creative thought went into it while the original Hangover was a breath of fresh air, this rehash seemed just a little too on-the-nose, a flimsy and too-blatant-by-half excuse for the studio to make more money off a runaway success. Naturally, the grievances come from a simple question didn't the characters learn anything first time around? I suppose you can absolve their convenient bout of amnesia with the logic of 'it's a comedy, lighten up', but still, when the plot is so obviously, cynically the same second time round, the lengths the film goes to in order to enact the same formula can stick in people's craws. Frankly, if Phil and Stu had any sense, they'd know that putting themselves in one of Asia's wildest, anything-goes cities and inviting well-known spiker-of-things Alan along for the ride was going to be a recipe for carnage. Sure, Alan doesn't do these things on purpose, but he's such a disaster-magnet that they seem to happen anyway, somehow. You would've thought that after nearly being killed by a tiger and gangsters in the last film, they would've just left their odd little friend at home until the actual nuptials. I'm sure everyone would've understood, and they probably could've just gone for a booze-up in a respectable establishment, rather hitching back onto the trail of rather samey idiocy.