THE HANGOVER: PART III (Rated R)

The wild and crazy times cannot last forever when the party scene begins to lose steam and fizzle out. That’s pretty much the case with “The Hangover” franchise.

The first “Hangover” film was, and remains, the best of the series. The setting of Las Vegas for a bachelor party gone horribly wrong resulted in comedy gold.

The second film took the Wolfpack to Thailand, where the boys encountered their nemesis Mr. Chow and made a series of bad decisions, of which some were quite comical.

Nevertheless, “The Hangover Part II” didn’t manage to completely capture the absurdist comic elements of the original. So it appears a return to Vegas is now in order.
 
Now two years later, “The Hangover Part III” opens with the clueless member of the Wolfpack, Alan (Zach Galfianakis), a man-child still living at home, thinking it would be a good idea to adopt a pet giraffe.

The group’s black sheep has ditched his meds and given into his natural impulses in a big way, resulting in a complete lack of good judgment while typically operating without boundaries.

Alan’s family decides it is time for an intervention, and the best ones to help are members of the Wolfpack. The boys plan a road trip to Arizona so that Alan can check into a rehab clinic.

They are not on their way to a bachelor party or a wedding in a foreign country, so what could possibly go wrong? After all, Mr. Chow is locked up in a Thai prison.

The pack’s nominal ringleader Phil (Bradley Cooper), the dentist Stu (Ed Helms), and the patsy Doug (Justin Bartha), having recovered from the disastrous trip abroad, think helping a friend should prove uneventful.

What the Wolfpack did not count on, however, was being kidnapped in the desert by the gangster Marshall (John Goodman), and his henchmen, including the one they group calls Black Doug (Mike Epps).

Unknown to the Wolfpack, the psychotic Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) made a daring prison escape and is headed to Mexico to apparently recover a hidden treasure of millions in stolen gold bars.

Marshall claims that Mr. Chow absconded with his share of the purloined gold treasure, and knowing how the Wolfpack has interacted with the Asian gangster, he thinks they are his best chance to locate him and the loot.

The hapless Doug is taken hostage to ensure that the Phil, Stu and Alan will hunt down Mr. Chow in Tijuana, recover the gold and return to Las Vegas within three days to save Doug from certain death.

Mr. Chow, the cokehead lunatic who popped out naked from the trunk of a car in the first film, proved to be funny when his scenes were limited to creating mayhem.

In “Part III,” the Asian crime boss becomes a bigger part of the picture, but not to greater effect. Now he’s not so much funny as he’s a menace to society and the group’s safety.

Oddly enough, “The Hangover Part III,” as if it has run out of ideas for manic wackiness, veers off into a more earnest crime thriller, complete with scenes of violence and brutality that are occasionally punctuated with comic relief.   

After betrayal and an unfortunate encounter with the Tijuana police, the Wolfpack must chase Mr. Chow to Las Vegas for the inevitable showdown, including a dazzling scene on the rooftop of Caesar’s Palace.

The familiarity of the Vegas scene helps somewhat to return the film to its comic roots, though the appearance of Heather Graham, now a housewife retired from prostitution, adds little.

Melissa McCarthy brings a nice comic touch in her cameo as a Vegas pawnshop clerk who gets all dreamy-eyed when she falls for Alan.

Don’t rush to leave when the credits roll, because half-way through there is a very funny scene that is reminiscent of the morning-after amnesia that worked so well in the original film. Nothing in this film tops the physical disfigurement of Stu.

Unfortunately, “The Hangover Part III” falls short of recapturing its initial brush with a truly innovative comic formula of unbridled mayhem.

Having admired the wacked-out originality of the first film’s hilarious antics, I was hoping for more of the same. Though the overall outcome is somewhat disappointing, “The Hangover Part III” has funny moments that are enjoyable; there just aren’t enough.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.