Jackson Free Press

Calling "The Hangover: Part III" a comedy borders on false and misleading advertising.

The film is politically incorrect without parody or satirical purpose. It's mean-spirited to a fault, as well as pedantic and boring. It's like the dull head throb the morning after one too many hurricanes on Bourbon Street (not that I would know what that's like or anything). 
 It's definitely time to shelve this billion-dollar bromance franchise and to blackout this version of the Wolfpack from memory.

In this last installment of grown-men-coming-to-the-age-of-responsible, director Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the script with Craig Mazin, focuses on making over Alan (Zach Galifianakis) from lovable pudge-bellied slob to mentally deranged weirdo. This twists the film from silly into sadistic. 
 As if to emphasize this new direction, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) gets expanded screen time, which allows the filmmakers to show prison riots, violent killing, bloody mayhem, cock fighting, shooting, more shooting and sexy penthouse parties.

Following in Mr. Chow's footsteps, Alan has become something of an unbearable monster. He stops his meds, makes one bad choice after another--including drinking and driving and transporting a pet giraffe, which leads to an interstate shut down--and creates a maelstrom that leaves his father dead in its wake.

Not funny.

Alan sings at his father's funeral (one of the few funny moments), but then insults his mother, sister and everyone in the audience.

Not funny.

Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Doug (Justin Bartha) stage an intervention. They try to substitute jokes for Alan's clinically unstable behavior.

Not funny.

En route to a treatment center in Arizona, a mobster-boss named Marshall (John Goodman) kidnaps Doug and blackmails the rest of the Wolfpack into locating their pal Mr. Chow. Chow stole gold bars from Marshall, and Marshall wants them back now.

This film is a road trip to nowhere in particular. The top 10 things I strongly dislike about this film are:

1. Drinking and driving.
2. A decapitated giraffe.
3. Laughing at mentally ill people.
4. Failure of self-absorbed son to notice his father's heart attack.
5. Old jokes about minivans.
6. Another dead black guy falling in the pool.
7. Telling a small child that you're his father, when you're not.
8. The pee-the-pants shot.
9. Mr. Chow's singing karaoke.
10. Stu's senseless sniveling.

The best scenes in this movie are minor movements before a plot point--or at the very end if you can hang on that long. I'm not giving anything away that you haven't seen in the trailer, which was quite spectacular in comparison to the final product, but one of the movie's best scenes involves Alan flirting with a pawnshop owner (Melissa McCarthy) in the notoriously familiar Las Vegas. They share a sucker as a symbol of their burgeoning love.

This movie, however, isn't worth the spit on the love-sucker. It's a sucker punch below the belt of funny.