'The Hangover' and why women aren't any fun, unless they're hookers

Oh boys oh boys. Little wonder men have a bad rep when you see a movie like 'The Hangover'. This film plays all the greatest hits -- misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia. And it's not all that funny either.

Now everyone's raving about this film (4 from 5 in The Irish Times!) so my friend Miriam and I wonder if it was just us who, for whatever reason, didn't get it when we saw it last night. You, Reader, may enjoy it wholeheartedly. Comedies, more than any other genre, suffer from hype. I often find that a comedy that is recommended to me by everyone will fail to live up to expectations when I get round to seeing it. And the opposite applies. I saw 'Little Miss Sunshine' before it became a huge hit and loved it. Some friends of mine, after finally seeing it on video, wondered what all the fuss was about.

But I can only go on what I saw last night and the impression it left me with. 'The Hangover' has some good moments but not once did I have that laughing-so-hard-I-seriously-might-puke feeling. It's slow and plodding and makes a meal out of some quite origional setups. So a mediocre comedy then?

Worse -- it managed to piss me off. All the men are adolescent boys (what happened to real men on screen? Clint's character in 'Gran Turino' would've chewed these hoopleheads up and the fucking tiger while he was at it). The women are worse. They are either one of the following:

shrews
princesses
tarts with hearts of gold.

I'll readily admit, I'd forgive the purile nature if the flick was fecking funny but....

I'll give 'The Hangover' two serious kudos; it looks great and the soundtrack isn't bad. But this is meant to be a comedy. I don't know, maybe I'm becoming a bit of a dry-arse, as we'd say in Mohill.