Todd Phillips likes his exotic animals. The Hangover had a tiger, the sequel featured a monkey, and, this teaser trailer for The Hangover Part III includes cameos by a giraffe (that appears to meet an untimely end) and some sort of bird of prey. There’s also a beefy dude in a pig mask chasing Zach Galifianakis . Does that count? If you prefer your comedy to be delivered by humans, check out the sexual tension scene involving Galifianakis, Melissa McCarthy and a lollipop— and Ed Helms throwing up in his mouth. There’s not enough Ken Jeong in this clip as far as I’m concerned, but it’s good to have the Wolf Pack back. The Hangover Part III opens on May 24. More on The Hangover Part III: Engorgio! Zach Galifianakis Appears As Portly Harry Potter In ‘The Hangover Part III’ Poster Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The reviews are in for the Todd Phillips-produced uber-party comedy Project X , and three out of four critics agree: It is the douchiest, most mean-spirited debauch of the year. (To date, anyway; we’ll see what kind of revisionist zest Steven Spielberg and co. bring to Lincoln .) Hop aboard Movieline’s scorched-earth golf cart and let’s go for a spin… 9. “You’ve got to hand it to Warner Brothers and producer Todd Phillips: They have painstakingly engineered the perfect film for today’s attention-impaired audiences. Are you a texter? A talker? Have at it. There is no way you could make this movie stupider or more pointlessly noisy than it already is.” — Sara Stewart , NY Post 8. “It would be easy to say Project X objectifies women, if the word ‘object’ didn’t imply too much dignity.” — Keith Phipps , AV Club 7. “Although it behaves as if its closest antecedent is a John Hughes teen movie, Project X plays more like a blend of music video, College Rules-style porn, and apocalypse-gazing. It’s all hyper-sensory flash and amateur titillation, ain’t it cool party-dogging and an ecstatic taxonomy of all the different ways you can drink a beer.” — Michelle Orange , Movieline 6. ” Project X ’s title has no bearing on its premise: a teenage house party in a quiet Californian suburb that spirals out of control. Nor is it connected to the 1987 film of the same name in which Matthew Broderick rescues a band of tormented chimpanzees, unless perhaps the chimpanzees wrote it. Overall, it’s flamboyantly loathsome on every imaginable level, and a great many unimaginable ones besides.” — Robbie Collin , The Telegraph 5. “[Oliver] Cooper’s brash, bragging Costa, in particular, is the most annoying movie character since Jar Jar Binks. You’d never tire of punching him. Let’s take all prints of the film, and bury them. Don’t bother marking the spot with an X.” — Chris Hewitt , Empire 4. “How bad is it? It kicks off the proceedings with the soundtrack blaring the 2 Live Crew classic ‘Hey, We Want Some Pussy,’ and that winds up constituting the closest that it comes to both quiet dignity and quality writing. It is so bad that it deploys a running gag featuring shenanigans involving a pet dog that even Michael Vick might take offense at.” — Peter Sobczynski , eFilmCritic 3. “It is not normal adolescent rebellion depicted here: it is sociopathic insurrection. It’s an orgy of destruction that is meant to be cool. And it’s not a cautionary tale. It’s not a warning that recognizes that real-life teenaged boys can indeed be colossal idiots sometimes, and perhaps we need to work together as a society to minimize the damage they can do, like perhaps training up our sons to be responsible citizens. It’s a celebration of colossal adolescent idiocy as something we should all aspire to, and would do, if we could only be as awesomely cool as a horny 17-year-old boy.” — Maryann Johanson Flick Filosopher 2. ” Project X is classless, mean-spirited, repugnant, deplorable, off-puttingly sleazy, and thoroughly contemptible. It is also searingly depressing — there isn’t a true laugh in sight — as well as worthless on every cinematic level one could name, imagine, or dream up.” — Dustin Putman , DustinPutman.com 1. “[A] certain self-justifying, feel-good impulse compels the filmmakers to imply that, even if [the characters] do nothing further of note in their lives, they’ll always have this. Herein lies the film’s lack of point-of-view, leaving it to the viewer to decide if the import of the evening is a joke, a tragedy, an irony or a victory. Despite a couple of unconvincingly upbeat tacked-on moments at the end, Project X basically reads as nihilistic, as not believing in or standing for anything. Not even fun.” — Todd McCarthy , The Hollywood Reporter Reviews via Rotten Tomatoes . Browse more of Moveline’s Scathing Critical Response features here . Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Todd Phillips doesn’t feel like directing the new Hangover right now, so he’s taking time to helm a cray-zay party movie where a self-declared “uncool” kid throws the bash of the century. Cars jump into pools! Music blares! Girls lick on some popsicles under Fiona Apple “Criminal” lighting! Parents call to make sure everything is going OK. It’s like a grittier version of Blank Check . I’ve been waiting for this since ’94.
Todd Phillips doesn’t feel like directing the new Hangover right now, so he’s taking time to helm a cray-zay party movie where a self-declared “uncool” kid throws the bash of the century. Cars jump into pools! Music blares! Girls lick on some popsicles under Fiona Apple “Criminal” lighting! Parents call to make sure everything is going OK. It’s like a grittier version of Blank Check . I’ve been waiting for this since ’94.
Regardless of what happens critically or commercially with The Hangover Part II , director Todd Phillips has established himself as nothing less than Hollywood’s reigning press-tour pugilist . Not literally, of course — no one has footage of him punching interrogators’ teeth into the backs of their throats (yet) — but rather with candid, confrontational aplomb, as featured in a new video interview.
Maybe including a monkey in The Hangover Part II was not director Todd Phillips’s finest idea. Earlier this month, the Motion Picture Association of America (rightly) complained about a sequence in which the denim jacketed primate simulates oral sex on Zach Galifianakis and Warner Bros. was forced to pull the the trailer from theaters. And now, officials at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are (rightly) outraged that Crystal, the capuchin monkey who appears in the film, cannot quit cigarettes after being taught to smoke on the Hangover: Part II set in Bangkok.
While discussing the underwhelming first trailer for The Hangover Part II recently, director Todd Phillips bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t reveal all the good stuff in the marketing . “[T]he truth is, we’re constrained by the fact that we’re R-rated, so you can’t give — even the trailer you just saw, that’s a PG-13 trailer, so by the nature of the movie, we’re holding so much stuff back just because you can’t show it.” Maybe he should have held back even more? At least according to the MPAA.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why Anchorman 2 , Wedding Crashers 2 and Zoolander 2 never came to fruition, perhaps watching the new trailer for The Hangover Part II will clear things up. Maybe it is a good thing Paramount never wanted to spend money on the Channel 4 News Team.
When the trailer for Bruno debuted in 2009 , Universal tried to sell audiences on the critical love for Sacha Baron Cohen’s previous summer comedy, Borat . It didn’t work. Cut to 2011, and here comes Warner Bros. using a similar strategy in the first teaser for The Hangover Part II (it looks like those Roman numerals are part of the official title), which uses quotes about the first film to fill up much of the trailer’s length. Is this highly anticipated sequel doomed to face a Bruno -like box office fate?
As promised , the conspicuously titled Project X — the Todd Phillips/Joel Silver co-produced guerrilla comedy — had found its no-name cast: Miles Teller, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Dax Flame, Nichole O’C onnor, Thomas Mann and Alexis Knapp will all hope to become the next McLovin’ — or Zack Galifianakis — when they take part in the Nima Nourizadeh-directed comedy. Precious few details about Project X are available, but it reportedly “revolves around a group of kids documenting a house party that suddenly goes awry,” and that “like Cloverfield , the movie would unfold from the point of view of the person videotaping the party.” So this is the Cloverfield sequel you’ve been waiting for! It’s gonna be the best night ever, etc. [ Variety ]
