Possible side effects include memory loss.

Review: The Hangover

Short version: Mike Tyson has a cameo.

In full: What happens in Vegas, like it or not, doesn't always stay in Vegas. "Like herpes," Jeffrey Tambor, who blesses The Hangover with two minutes of face time, admonishes. Like lashes across the neck from a tiger attack. Like sunburned skin the shade lobsters fantasize about. Yes, this is the residue of a bachelor party in Sin City, with four men who live to tell the tale.


Or the parts they recall. The intrigue of The Hangover is its Nevada-desert-noir plotting, where three buddies awaken to a ravaged room in Caesar's Palace, a tiger amid the detritus, and no recollection of their escapades the night before. An arthouse director would bathe the shots in swatches of gleaming, caustic light refracting across the glossy Strip and the desolate open roads. But this is not that film; nor is it a graduate from the Judd Apatow "Bromance" School of Thought. Like Las Vegas, it's a shiny bauble that's deceptively crass. Underneath, everything's pretty ordinary.

Even three of the Musketeers drowning in the Vegas sandstorm are regular guys: Bradley Cooper, Justin Bartha, and Ed Helms of The Office. In 2009, regular's become the new black. Such casting feels refreshing but overdone in recent man-focused comedies. Zach Galifianakis, on the other hand, plays the familiar schlubby sidekick like an alien tourist bemused by planet Earth. As he deadpans through a series of ludicrously unfortunate events, never breaking a straight face, the movie finds its zing. (To Helms' credit, he bravely plays an hour onscreen with a tooth missing; one of his incisors in real life is artificial.)

You're likely to laugh, even guffaw, at their insouciance. Imagine sitting in a crowded theater, your neighbors barreled over (scooping up renegade popcorn?). It must be funny, right? you ask, forcing yourself to compete through a gauntlet of thigh slaps and did-you-see-that-bro! exclamations. Better sneak in a six-pack and take a shot for every familiar Vegas sight: Wayne Newton, impromptu weddings, prostitutes with hearts of gold, stereotypical Asian gamblers. Then wake up the next morning and try to remember what went down.