According to Colwell

The premise of The Hangover is that the morning after a wild bachelor party in Las Vegas, the 3 groomsmen have no recollection of the night before and the groom is missing. Added to that, they wake up in their trashed hotel suite with: a chicken, a missing tooth, an abandoned (but happy) baby, a hospital wrist band, and a tiger. And that’s not the end of the list of surprises. The movie does a remarkably good job of explaining these oddities. The only remaining mystery at the end of the movie, by my count, was the chicken.
That gives the movie a chance to be an exceptional comedy. (A movie build on whacky events without plausibility can provide funny moments, but without some underlying consistency it will ultimately be merely a disappointment.) I found the rapid-fire unraveling of the movie’s many mysteries occasionally distracting and more often funny in an abstract way. The movie jumps between the morning after and various flashbacks to the night before, lending a lot of the action a second-hand feel. It was at times more like listening to your friend tell you about something really funny that happened to him than it was a visceral first-hand experience.
Which is not to say that it is not very funny to hear about your friend’s misadventures with Mike Tyson’s tiger or the time his friend got married to an escort at Vegas wedding chapel. It’s just that it’s usually funnier to see it unfold firsthand rather than have it explained after the fact. It’s kind of like starting off with a bag of punch lines and then learning the set-ups one by one.

This Tony Scott directed suspense film is a pleasingly direct and simple heist movie. Denzel Washington plays a subway dispatcher who has the misfortune to be at the mike when the train Pelham 123 is hijacked by an F-bomb-dropping “Ryder” (John Travolta). It is fun to see Washington in a relatively understated role, and he is pitch-perfect as usual. Cast against type for a refreshing change is John Turturro who plays a reasonable and intelligent hostage negotiator (as opposed to either a weakling or a villain, as he too often seems to be cast).

The plot is deceptively simple. Ryder leads a gang of armed thugs after a big hostage payoff. He has some real anger management issues, but it is Garber (Washington) who is at the heart of the movie. Ryder uses the threat of violence against hostages to get Garber to reveal personal secrets. The crisis is a crucible, ultimately, for Garber to resolve some of his personal demons.

There are a couple of misdirections of the audience’s expectations. Some of these serve to heighten tension: developments that will apparently aid the police are not exploited at all, contrary to our expectations. Others, however, are peculiarly left aside. Without giving away too much, a line of investigation into Ryder that runs throughout the movie ultimately pays off, but is ultimately ignored. This leaves the personal drama centered completely on Garber and loses an opportunity to make a more three-dimensional character out of Ryder. And, the heist story itself, relatively trim at 1:46, could have had a more intricate third act if the story of Ryder’s past and police action against him using what they learned had been thoroughly exploited.

These decisions were more puzzling than anything else, and the movie is still a solid and gripping suspense story with fine and convincing acting.

Disclaimer: I find any movie that shows people young and happy growing old depressing because it makes me think I might grow old. Up, the latest Pixar feature, accomplishes this in the first 5 minutes with a montage of the lives of Ellie and Carl from childhood sweethearts through old age and Ellie’s death. The story then begins with Carl lonely, retired, and isolated in his wood frame house surrounded by skyrise construction. Rather than go quietly to a retirement home, he launches his house with helium balloons to fulfill Ellie’s childhood dream of reaching the mythic Paradise Falls in South America. Accidentally caught along for the ride in the floating house is Russell, a chubby Wilderness Explorer trying to earn a merit badge for helping the elderly.

Carl and Ellie had dreamed of adventure as kids, but life with all its complications got in the way. In his determination to get to Paradise Falls, Carl forgets that adventure is not about the destination, but about the voyage. Needless to say, he learns that lesson with help from Russell, a large squawking rainbow-colored bird, and a talking dog named Doug. The dogs (and there are many) are equipped with collars that translate their thoughts into speech. This is a clever gimmick (A. L. Gurney pioneered it for the wonderful play Sylvia) and provides most of the movie’s laughs. But Up is more poignant than funny. Carl and Russell do find their adventure, and even though I didn’t see it in 3D my stomach was clenched during many of the aerobatic chase scenes (another disclaimer: I have a fear of any high place that does not have a barricade sufficient to stop me from jumping off). While it may be unfair to compare this to Wall-E (though both are animated, they really are different genres of movie), I will say that it is as touching, but less - I struggle for the right word - cheerful.