'Hangover' Is Stupid, Profane And Genuinely Funny

JACKI LYDEN, Host:

"The Hangover" is a new movie about a bachelor party so wild that the next morning, when the party guys wake up in a trashed Vegas hotel suite, no one can remember a thing.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE HANGOVER")

U: (As character) Do not go in the bathroom.

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M: (As Phil Wenneck) Yeah, we throw some (unintelligible).

U: (As character) Phil, there is a tiger in the bathroom.

M: (As Phil Wenneck) What's going on?

U: (As character) There's a jungle cat in the bathroom.

M: (As Phil Wenneck) Okay. Okay. I'll check it out.

U: (As character) Don't go in. Be careful. Don't go.

(SOUNDBITE OF A TIGER'S ROAR)

M: (As Phil Wenneck) Wait, he's not kidding. There's a tiger in there.

U: (As character) Yeah.

LYDEN: Sounds like a premise for a raucous guy comedy if ever there was one. So we decide to bring in our own raucous guy, movie critic Bob Mondello...

BOB MONDELLO: Oh, my.

LYDEN: ...to talk about the movie.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

LYDEN: Hi.

MONDELLO: I'm not feeling terribly raucous but okay.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

LYDEN: We can work on that.

MONDELLO: Okay. Well, I'll be happy to.

LYDEN: And this movie will help. So let me get it straight. Four guys have a bachelor party, three wake up with a tiger in the hotel suite, and I guess the groom is missing.

MONDELLO: That's right. And there's also a baby in the closet, and Stu is missing a tooth; one of the guys there. And they were all going through their pockets the next day because they're trying to figure out what. They don't remember anything, and so they're going through pockets. They're trying to find something that will give them clues. And they find a bill for $800, I think, was to a wedding chapel. They find the tooth.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MONDELLO: And among the other things they find is some evidence that one of them was in a hospital. And they follow the hospital thread and that gets them to a wedding chapel. And there, they've discovered that one of them has gotten married. And so they track down the bride and happily, the baby is hers.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE HANGOVER")

M: (As Jade) I'm going to go clean him off. That's all right, daddy didn't mean it.

(SOUNDBITE OF A CRYING BABY)

M: (As Jade) No.

U: (As character) Oh, my God.

M: (As Jade) He was just hungry. He's fine.

U: (As character) Oh, good.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

U: (As character) About last night, do you remember the last time you saw Doug?

M: (As Jade) I guess it was around 1:00 because I had to go back to work and finish my shift. And then when I got out, I headed to over to the hotel with Tyler.

U: (As character) I have a question. You said when your shift ended, does that mean you're a nurse or a blackjack dealer?

M: (As Jade) You know this, I'm a stripper.

U: (As character) Mm hmm.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MONDELLO: So they're now married and he has to deal with that. And all of this happens in, like, the first 25 minutes. And it's not the kind of comedy that I'm usually very favorable about. Because on some level it is just about jokes, right?

LYDEN: Right.

MONDELLO: But this one, for some reason, works better than most of them. It's just, it's funny.

LYDEN: Well, it looked funny to me. And it's a guy film, "Pineapple Express," "Superbad," you know, you think Judd Apatow, did he have anything to do with this movie?

MONDELLO: In general, he makes very clever movies that are cleverer than their premises, in a way. And I think that's what he's done again. This is, sort of one of his predecessors is something like "Animal House." Except this is "Animal House" for the young married set.

LYDEN: You know, sometimes you just need a movie and that a lost weekend. I think it looks like a last one.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MONDELLO: "The Lost Weekend," now there is the other - that's the other way of looking at this is drunken jamboree.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MONDELLO: It is stupid. It's profane. The language in it is just awful. There's a reason that it got an R-rating. And it's genuinely a funny movie. It's worth it.

LYDEN: And there's a cameo by Mike Tyson.

MONDELLO: This is true.

LYDEN: Bob Mondello is our movie critic, talking with us about the new movie "Hangover," one we might not have expected but that makes it all the better, Bob.

MONDELLO: Totally true. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.