Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon
In 2009, The Hangover ticked off pretty much every item you can imagine on the R-rated-comedy checklist on its way to record-setting box office glory. Foul language? Check. Drinking and drug use? Check. Wildly inappropriate sexual humor involving a baby? Check. Naked man jumping out of the trunk of a car and attacking people with a crowbar? Well, hey, it was Vegas. So how exactly do you top all of that insanity in a sequel? For the screenwriting team behind The Hangover Part II — director Todd Phillips and co-writers Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong — the only answer was to go for broke and explore the outer boundaries of what the MPAA would allow in terms of R-rated outrageousness. “We were given full license to push it to the limit,” Armstrong says. “The first Hangover almost had its own set of rules, and we definitely weren’t going to hold back on the second one.”
Setting the story in Bangkok, a city whose very name connotes danger and exotic pleasures, opened up whole new worlds of trouble for the movie’s main characters — Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) — to get themselves into when they travel to Thailand for Stu’s wedding. READ FULL STORY »
