"I'm afraid, I was very, very drunk"

Have you ever watched a film at the cinema and found that some people in the audience were laughing hysterically, when you’ve only just been mildly amused? You know, others are almost to the point of requiring medical attention and you’ve only just quietly tittered at the same jokes?

Well that’s exactly what happened to me last week when I went to see The Hangover with my mate Andrew. Honestly, you’d think some of the audience had never been out of the house before, let alone to the cinema.

Now the cynic in me thinks that as the film was a free preview screening, there might’ve been a few, shall we say, “special” audience members who might’ve been paid to laugh noisily for atmospheric purposes and ‘pump up’ the rest of the audience to generate a positive buzz ahead of the official release of the film. But, that’s just a hunch. Wouldn’t surprise me though!

Of course, it could just be that the rest of the audience hadn’t seen the trailer, which contains most of the major plot points of the film and so leaves few surprises for those of us that have watched it. The short version is: Four guys go to Vegas on a stag do, get drunk and have a wild night, can’t remember anything in the morning, realise that the groom has gone missing, spend the rest of the film piecing together what happened the night before so they can find him and get him back for the wedding.

For me, The Hangover was a watchable half-decent comedy at best. But if the audience we saw it with were anything to go by, 95% of people would disagree with me – especially as it’s currently an imdB top 250 film (#126 as I type! *facepalm*) with a sequel already in the works.

6.5/10.