The Hangover

The Hangover is a 2009 American comedy film directed by Todd Phillips, co-produced with Daniel Goldberg, and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It is the first installment in The Hangover trilogy. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, and Jeffrey Tambor. It tells the story of Phil Wenneck (Cooper), Stu Price (Helms), Alan Garner (Galifianakis), and Doug Billings (Bartha), who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party to celebrate Doug's impending marriage. However, Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up with Doug missing and no memory of the previous night's events, and must find the groom before the wedding can take place.

Lucas and Moore wrote the script after executive producer Chris Bender's friend disappeared and had a large bill after being sent to a strip club. After Lucas and Moore sold it to the studio for $2 million, Phillips and Jeremy Garelick rewrote the script to include a tiger as well as a subplot involving a baby and a police cruiser, and also including boxer Mike Tyson. Filming took place in Nevada for 15 days, and during filming, the three main actors (Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis) formed a real friendship.

The Hangover was released on June 5, 2009,[4] and was a critical and commercial success. The film became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009, with a worldwide gross of over $467 million. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and received multiple other accolades. It is the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever in the United States at the time (before its sequel broke the record), surpassing a record previously held by Beverly Hills Cop for almost 25 years.[5]

A sequel, The Hangover Part II, was released on May 26, 2011, and a third and final installment, The Hangover Part III, was released on May 23, 2013. While both were also box-office hits, neither was well-received.

Plot

Two days before his wedding, Doug Billings, a cheerful yet careful bachelor, travels to Las Vegas with his best friends Phil Wenneck, a sarcastic Elementary School teacher, and Stu Price, an apprehensive dentist. He also brings Alan Garner, his future brother-in-law who is immature and eccentric. Sid, the father of his fiancée Tracy, allows Doug to drive his vintage Mercedes-Benz W111 to Vegas from Los Angeles. They get a suite at Caesars Palace, and celebrate by sneaking onto the hotel rooftop and taking shots of Jägermeister. The next morning, Phil, Stu, and Alan awaken to find they have no memory of the previous night; Doug is nowhere to be found, Stu's tooth is missing, the suite is a disaster, a Bengal tiger is in the bathroom, and a baby is in the closet. They see Doug's mattress impaled on a statue outside and when they ask for their Mercedes, the valet delivers an LVPD police cruiser.

Retracing their steps, the trio travel to a hospital where they discover they were drugged with Rohypnol (roofies), causing their memory loss, and that they went to the hospital from a chapel the previous night. At the chapel, they learn that Stu married an escort named Jade, despite being in a long-term relationship with his domineering and philandering girlfriend Melissa. Outside the chapel, the trio is attacked by gangsters demanding to know where "he" is. Bewildered, they flee and track down Jade, the mother of the baby.

They are then arrested by the police for having stolen the police cruiser. After being told that the Mercedes was impounded, the trio are released when they unwittingly volunteer to be targets for a taser demonstration. While driving the Mercedes, they discover a naked Chinese man named Mr. Chow in the trunk, who beats the trio with a crowbar and flees. Alan confesses that he drugged their drinks to ensure they had a good night, believing the drug to be ecstasy.

Returning to their suite, they find Mike Tyson, who knocks Alan unconscious and orders them to return his tiger to his mansion. Stu drugs it, they load it into the Mercedes, and drive to Tyson's mansion. However, the tiger awakens midway and attacks them, clawing Phil on the neck and damaging the car's interior. They push the car the rest of the way to the mansion, and successfully deliver the tiger to Tyson, who shows them security camera footage indicating they didn't lose Doug until they got back to the hotel. While driving back, their car is rammed by a black Cadillac Escalade manned by the gangsters from the chapel and Chow, who is their boss. Chow accuses them of kidnapping him and stealing $80,000 in poker chips. As they deny it, he tells them he has Doug, and threatens to kill him if it is not returned. Unable to find Chow's chips, Alan, with help from Stu and Jade, uses his knowledge of card counting to win $82,400 playing blackjack.

The next morning, they meet Chow in the Mojave Desert to exchange the chips for Doug, only to find that the Doug in question is actually the drug dealer who sold the roofies to Alan the previous night. With the real Doug's wedding set to occur in five hours, Phil calls Tracy to tell her they cannot find him. Simultaneously, the other Doug remarks that someone who takes roofies is more likely to end up on the floor than on the roof; Stu suddenly realizes where Doug is, interrupting Phil before he can reveal Doug's disappearance to Tracy.

They travel back to Caesars Palace where they find a dazed and sunburned Doug on the roof, who they moved there on his mattress the previous night as a practical joke; Doug had thrown the mattress onto the statue in an attempt to signal for help. Before leaving, Stu makes arrangements to meet Jade for a date the following week. With no flights available, the four drive home in the mangled Mercedes. Despite their late arrival, Doug and Tracy are married. At the wedding, Stu finally stands up for himself and breaks up with Melissa. Alan finds Stu's digital camera containing photos of the debauchery from the night in Las Vegas, and the four agree to look at the pictures before deleting them.