Finally saw "The Hangover"...

Courtesy of an HBO/Cinemax Free Preview weekend (the only thing I like better than a weekend is a FREE weekend), I finally saw "The Hangover," that runaway balls-to-the-wall smash comedy hit of the not-so-distant past. Was it worth it? Well, yeah, it was worth FREE. But did it live up to the hype? Well, maybe not so much.

The wife and I laughed and had a pleasant enough time watching it, but neither of us were exactly convulsing with laughter. The cast was OK. The jokes were OK. Parts were really funny, other parts weren't so great. Groundbreaking? No. Solid comedy? Yep. Complete sentences in this post? Not so much.

Actually, the brilliant part of "The Hangover" was perhaps its most basic aspect: its structure. Opening the movie by establishing that something wild happened, then making the audience wait to discover what by having viewers learn at the same time as the characters, is a great gambit that draws people in and keeps them. I don't think the payoff in "The Hangover" fulfilled the promise of that simple but perfect set-up.

The best part of "The Hangover" to me is without a doubt the comic genius of that master thespian we all know as Iron Mike Tyson, playing himself. The bit with him listening to Phil Collins, then punctuating a drum fill by slugging one of the groomsmen, cracked me up even after I had seen it dozens of times in repeated viewings of the trailer. Then when Mike asks the guys where they got the police car, and they tell him they basically stole it, the former champ goes, "Niiiice," with a big grin, and his delivery brought me the biggest laugh I got from the whole movie.

It's a great moment, but I expected the laughs in "The Hangover" to be a little heartier. After all, a comedy classic shouldn't rely on Mike Tyson to serve up its best moments, should it?