‘The Hangover’ explained: What happened to Doug?
2009 comedy film The Hangover made a box office winner out of drunken idiocy, turning the trusty buddy comedy into a bachelor party nightmare. It’s hard to believe that ten years after its release, director Todd Phillips would be garnering widespread acclaim for his innovative and cineliterate take on the origin story Joker.
The Hangover may have spawned a billion-dollar franchise and whole new premarital male rituals, as well as rehabilitating Mike Tyson’s public image, but its low-hanging, laddish humour and boys-on-tour storyline now appear somewhat dated. Nevertheless, while the film itself may not have stood the test of time, it helped make a superstar out of lead actor Bradley Cooper and turned Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis into household names.
Netflix has been tapping into the nostalgia felt by bros in search of comedy for a while now, and as a result, The Hangover is experiencing a resurgence 15 years after its initial release. There are certainly far worse, less deserving, and ultimately less funny movies out there hoovering up millions of streams. So why not give this coarse but amusing comedy its moment in the sun? As long as it’s not left there too long (more on that later).
The movie’s conceit (which is repeated with diminishing returns in its sequels) is to play a calamitous night out in reverse, with its characters trying to piece together what happened amid the wreckage and bizarre clues they wake up the next morning. And find Doug, the innocent groom-to-be who’s been taken to Vegas for a bachelor party with his friends, only to disappear among the carnage of their celebrations.
Its three stag party organisers Phil, Stu and Alan awake to find a tiger in their hotel bathroom, a crying baby, and no Doug. “He’s not in there,” Alan confirms when he checks Doug’s room. “Plus his mattress is gone.” Phil tries to reach him on his mobile, but hears it ringing in their room. Doug is lost in Las Vegas without any means of contacting his friends.
So how do they find him?
The trio’s search for Doug leads them to discover that they’ve accidentally stolen a police car, married Stu off to an escort in a shotgun wedding, stolen Mike Tyson’s pet, and made enemies with a naked Chinese gangster called Mr Chow. They manage to pay Chow, who Ken Jeong plays with scenery-chewing aplomb, for the freedom of a hostage called Doug, assuming they’re getting their groom back. Only to find that it’s the wrong Doug.
Just when all hope seems lost, it suddenly and inexplicably hits Helms’ character, Stu, where their Doug must be. “He’s on the roof!” he announces, referring to the roof of their hotel where they’d carried him on his mattress while he was asleep as a joke.
Doug, played by National Treasure star Justin Bartha, is understandably furious – and badly sunburnt – when they find him. All’s well that ends well, though, as they get him to his wedding in the nick of time, where Stu breaks up with his abusive girlfriend and decides to keep in touch with the call girl he accidentally married after all. A watertight rebuttal to the charge of toxic masculinity, if there ever was one.
