Heather Graham

With his most stylish film yet, horror specialist Alexandre Aja takes a wildly irreverent approach, packing the screen with rude humour, visual flourishes and spiky characters. But it's assembled in such a rapid-fire way that it's difficult to get a handle on anything, which makes the movie feel like a series of outrageous set-pieces without a coherent plot to hold them together. The likeable actors help bring their characters to life, but the film is too hyperactive to let us engage with any of them.

It's set in a small town near Seattle, where Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) is in shock after his childhood sweetheart Merrin (Juno Temple) was violently murdered. Then he becomes the prime suspect, and the media have a field day. So he hires his lifelong pal Lee (Max Minghella) as his lawyer, partly because he's the only person in town who believes he's innocent. This includes Ig's parents (James Remar and Kathleen Quinlan) and brother (Joe Anderson). As the situation continues to deteriorate, Ig suddenly discovers that horns are growing on his head and no one seems very shocked by this. They also seem unable to lie in his presence, so he decides to use this to find out who really killed Merrin. Along the way he gets a shocking glimpse into what everyone in town really thinks about each other.

The film is an assault on the senses, as Aja packs every moment with outrageous sights and sounds, encouraging the actors to sometimes drift over the line into broad slapstick. He also fills the screen with religious imagery, including churches, crosses, pitchforks and snakes, all hinting that Ig's transformation is connected with his loss of faith. Or maybe it's just part of the film's jokey attitude. But as pieces of the central mystery slowly fall into place, the movie seems to become looser and less coherent. Even when the real villain is identified, there's still at least half an hour of flashbacks and revelations, confrontations and conclusions, none of which are particularly surprising or satisfying.

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For a comedy that so desperately wants to be rude and sexy, this movie is remarkably timid. It does a great job putting up a front as an anarchic laugh riot, but the genuinely funny moments are few and far between. And it seems to have been written by sniggering teenage boys who can only imagine what it's like to experience sex, drugs and romance, but they haven't a clue, really. Thankfully, the starry cast makes it just about watchable.

With a drunken mom (Mary-Louise Parker) and a deadbeat dad (Cary Elwes), 17-year-old Rick (Nat Wolff) pretty much has to grow up on his own. Then over two fateful weeks everything starts going wrong. Just as he seems to be making progress with hot good-girl Nina (Selena Gomez), he gets caught in a drug deal with a strip-club manager (Dylan McDermott), the cops find a dead mobster in his car, and then everyone is arrested when a house party he throws turns into a drug-fuelled sex romp. Even more precarious for Rick is the fact that he has just lost his virginity to Pamela (Elisabeth Shue), who is both his mother's best friend and the mother of his best friend Billy (Lachlan Buchanan).

Yes, the script wallows in sex and drugs, but never seems quite sure what to do with them, shying away whenever anything remotely grown-up threatens to happen. Instead, scenes degenerate into corny broad comedy that feels more than a little desperate. Director Tim Garrick throws everything he can think of at the screen, so naturally a few gags stick. Even if the plot is paper-thin, and several of the jokes are beyond offensive (including gags hinging on both statutory and prison rape), there are also several witty zingers that elicit outright laughter. Such as when Nina remarks casually that her parents are away from home attending a pro-life gun rally in Dallas.

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For the final instalment of the trilogy, filmmaker Todd Phillips takes a sharp left turn, abandoning the formula of the first two movies to send the Wolf Pack on a road thriller that isn't remotely funny. A few wacky moments are provided by the actors, but there isn't one punchline in the entire film. And it doesn't really work as a thriller either, since there's no real suspense.

Once again it starts in Los Angeles, where everyone has recovered from their antics in Bangkok. But Phil, Stu and Doug (Cooper, Helms and Bartha) are worried that Alan (Galifianakis) is refusing to grow up, so they hold an intervention and set out to drive him to a desert retreat. On the way, they're waylaid by mobster Marshall (Goodman), who holds Doug hostage to force the the Wolf Pack to find renegade nutcase Chow (Jeong), who has stolen Marshall's stash of gold bars. They track Chow to Mexico, but things quickly get even messier as Chow slips through their fingers. And to catch him, they'll have to return to the scene of their original adventure: Las Vegas.

There isn't much to the screenplay, which is a series of action scenes and caper-style set-pieces strung together with rapid-fire dialog and general vulgarity. But while the film is expertly shot and edited, with a solid cast and terrific settings, there simply isn't any actual humour. No one gets drunk, so there's no hangover this time. And the only amusing moments are offhanded character bits that are utterly irrelevant to the nonsensical chaos of the plot. Which kind of makes us wonder why we ever found these losers so hilarious to begin with.

Continue reading: The Hangover Part III Review