Hangover, The

Premiere Rob Calvert

This is a movie where you WANT to stick around for the credits. The beauty is that you are totally set up for it, and you don't mind one bit. That final sequence ties the movie together in an awesome fashion.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

A piercingly funny, twisted "whatever-happens-in-Vegas" caper.

Variety Joe Leydon

At once raucously free-wheeling and meticulously contrived, picture satisfies as a boys-gone-wild laff riot that also clicks as a seriocomic beat-the-clock detective story.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The Hangover is a shaggy-dog tale that's actually, when you step back from it, perfectly shaped.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Todd Phillips is no artist, but his lowbrow comedies (Road Trip, Old School) always hit the mark because they're so psychologically true: the superego tries to control the id, but the id gets drunk and barfs all over it. Hilarious.

TV Guide Cammila Albertson

So if you're looking for the next stop on the Shockingly Experimental Comedy train, don't get off here -- this ride is strictly for laughs.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A funny movie, flat out, all the way through. Its setup is funny. Every situation is funny. Most of the dialogue is funny almost line by line.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The Hangover ain't art, but Phillips has shaped the hardcore hilarity into the summer party movie of all our twisted dreams.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

There is a sort of perverse brilliance or brilliant perverseness to be found in this story of a bachelor party gone terribly wrong.

Empire Simon Braund

A furiously paced, inventive and flat-out hilarious take on a tried-and-tested formula. An exemplary bromantic comedy that doesn't sacrifice heart in pursuit of laughs, maintaining plenty of the former and a superabundance of the latter.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

The Hangover instantly has the feel of one for the ages.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Overall it's more amusing than hilarious.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The Hangover remains unrepentantly irresponsible and hilarious throughout, culminating with what could be the funniest montage ever to grace a picture's end credits. The summer's first sleeper hit has arrived.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's a worst-case-scenario of bachelor party morning-after, and it is howlingly funny.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A lot of what happens is gross, puerile and gratuitous, granted, but Helms and Galifianakis are truly funny in offbeat fashion, and the script allows Phillips room for some brilliant slapstick. You will not be ennobled. But you will be entertained.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Director Todd Phillips (Old School) has a knack for extreme scenarios and outside-the-box casting. He has made a movie that is consistently funny from start to finish.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The Hangover pushes the boundaries of good taste, good sense, and good will toward man. And you'll feel good about it all.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Raunchy frat comedies are as hard to pull off as any other kind because they have to keep surprising the audience, and The Hangover does with a bizarre series of uproarious situations with explanations that just about stay within the bounds of plausibility.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The funniest movie so far this year.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For a viewer in the mood for something rude, crude, and lewd, it would be difficult to find a more satisfying food.

New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott

It is classless, it is tasteless, it is idiotic, it is juvenile and it is something your mother totally wouldn't approve of. But it also is flat-out hilarious, a go-for-broke comedy that not only is the best laugher released so far this summer, but one of the best so far this year.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Sitting through The Hangover is like watching "Memento" featuring the Three Stooges.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

It doesn't disappoint. It gets the job done thanks in large part to the breakout performance given by Galifianakis. It's no "Old School," but it will do nicely until that film's anticipated sequel rolls around in 2011.

Slate Dana Stevens

This kind of "one crazy night" tale relies on drum-tight structure to work. Without it, The Hangover sputters to a sentimental halt. Still, it's worth staying for the closing credits.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

But true to its title, The Hangover goes down smoothly enough and then kicks you in the head later on, when you start to examine the sources of your laughter.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

Phillips can't bring himself to push the material into truly outré territory, or to characterize his growth-impaired guys as degenerate creeps rather than lovable scamps.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

It's an agreeably unambitious comedy that might be called a romp, if that word didn't imply a little too much energy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Rude, lewd and occasionally in the nude, The Hangover brings a collection of fresh faces to the familiar raucous male-bonding comedy.

Time Richard Corliss

Even Galifianakis's pervy charm, and a deeply weird cameo by Mike Tyson, can't save The Hangover. Whatever the other critics say, this is a bromance so primitive it's practically Bro-Magnon.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Amusing as it is, it never feels real.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The Hangover is like an infernal comedy machine. Surrender your soul to its foul mesh of cheap cleverness and vulgarity. and you howl like a delighted demon. Resist, and you feel all sense and sensibility being crushed in its cogs.