The Hungover Games is the latest sluggish addition to the "Let's parody anything that might be remotely funny" category of film, lampooning The Hunger Games (duh), Ted, The Hangover series, Carrie, Django Unchained and others.
This film steals so much from its peers, while at the same time lacking so many of its own original ideas that our main characters are actually taken directly from The Hangover. And for the most part, the storyline, or at least the first fifthteen minutes is also exactly the same as the 2009 Vegas Comedy. Just like in those movies, the fourth friend of the group is misplaced, leaving the first three to try and remember all the terrible things that they did the night before, in an attempt to rediscover him. I know this is a parody, but really? Word-for-word lines from The Hangover have been pilfered as their own. It's astonishing the true lack of any creativity that The Hungover Games possesses, whereas other awful spoof movies such as, say, Scary/Epic Movie seem to have some (very few) of their own ideas, here, "writers" Kyle Barnett Anderson et al, make it feel like they've photocopied Todd Philips' screenplay badly and then taken it for themselves.
But it turns out our three buddies have been transported to Hunger Games Land where they have to fight to the death with all the other favourable movies of the last seven years or so. This takes all those films you may have possibly enjoyed over the past few years and throws them in to one terrible mush: watch as the Ted bear has a penis, Katniss Everdeen has had her name changed to "Katnip" (HA!), and Willy Wonka is a homosexual. Add to that pops at race, some Human Centipede "jokes", underage sex gags and just a little bit of necrophilia and you experience an hour and a half of pure film diabolica. And for the people who defend the jokes for being jokes, perhaps if they were funny, fine, but otherwise it just comes off as offensive and downright lazy. The brow for this movie is so low that it's scraping along the ground.
I'll end on the only two positives: The people who play the Hangover team are very convincing, and the film itself is shot quite nicely. Otherwise, please, do not go and see this movie. I would rather have been dispatched by a Hunger Games arrow to the face then to have seen this film. Run – sprint, even – away if someone suggests watching this piece of garbage.
@JonnyJonJon1
