The Hangover - B+

In theaters. Rated R(!), 96 minutes. Trailer.

Raucous guy movies are my favorite types of movies to watch. When the director of the masterpiece that is Old School (Todd Phillips) is at the helm, I get to the theater quick. The Hangover delivers on its promising trailer and succeeds in providing lots of R-rated laughs and what!? moments. Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married, so he and his friends Phil the cool guy (Bradley Cooper) and Stu the p-whipped dentist (Ed Helms) along with the bride's weird brother Allen (Zach Galifianakis) head to Las Vegas for a bachelor party. Click below for more on Hangover:

The crew assembles and drives to Vegas, checking into a suite and making a toast. Cut to the next morning (featured prominently in the trailer) when all hell has broken loose and the groom is missing. Trouble is, none of the others remember anything from the night before. So they set out to retrace their steps to find the groom, and bizarreness and hilarity ensue. Along the way they encounter a doctor, a tiger, Mike Tyson, a crazy nude chinese man, a chicken, breastfeeding, gunfire, drug dealers and other weird/funny stuff.

The cast is great, with Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms as the standouts. Cooper plays the Vince Vaughn-ish leader of the group and does an admirable job. Helms is consistently funny, playing a character with roots in his Office character, but enough of a variation to be interesting - his timing and delivery of several of the lines and scenes was great. Galifianakis is the obligatory weird guy, and he mostly pulls it off. Role players Rachael Harris, Jeffrey Tambor, Heather Graham and Ken Jeong round out a solid cast, with Jeong gracing the viewer with the craziest, most memorable film entrance in recent memory.

There are multiple funny scenes and laugh-out loud moments, and even some decent (if tired) plots and subplots that I enjoyed (mostly involving Ed Helms). The film doesn't reach 'classic' status like Old School or Wedding Crashers mostly because it is haunted by the ghosts of Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson and, most of all, Vince Vaughn. Those guys all make their movies so much better and would've done the same here.

This is a hard R, so don't go with the sensitive types or on a first date. Hopefully this will be playing in Wyoming in 2 short weeks (!).