Hungover Games - Giochi mortali

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

This movie is dumb. Just look at the name. Yeah, I know it's not supposed to be smart but it is supposed to be funny, and unfortunately this is not. I will say that it is better than abominations like The Starving Games, Vampires Suck, Scary Movie 5 and Disaster Movie, but that's like saying dog p*ss is better than cat sh*t. They're both awful and both leave a bad taste in your mouth.

This movie gets an extra point for potential. It's refreshing to see a spoof movie that isn't by the two that shall not be named, and some ideas in the movie do work. There's a plot this time: We follow the three Hangover guys (who bare a striking resemblance to their respective actors) on their Hunger Games adventure. I also like how the spoofs are limited to a certain character or group participating in "The Hungover Games", such as The Real House Wives, Ted, Thor, and a group of every Johnny Depp character of the past few years. Some of them are funny - I really wanted more of the Johnny Depps - but some just don't work. A team for gratuitous sex? I know it's making fun of the fact that a lot of movies have gratuitous sex for the sake of it but that's exactly what it's doing here, so it's like a spoof that's spoofing itself... and it's not nearly as deep as it sounds.

I smiled a few times in this movie. The main cast was fine (the supporting cast had some horrendous actors though), and I like how the movie actually has a story and an attempt at coherency. But the number one thing I look for in a comedy are laughs, and The Hungover Games did not provide any. If you're smashed and with your friends and want to see a really dumb movie for some cheap laughs for an hour and a half then yeah you might enjoy The Hungover Games, but for anyone else, I implore you, don't watch this movie.

Going into any parody movie you really shouldn't expect anything. With the bar set low, it's a little less bad.

I laughed a handful of times but definitely lost interest before the movie ended. A few good gags but they're lost in an underwhelming parody. If you're really bored and out of things to watch I guess it might be okay? Wouldn't watch it again.

Plot

A spoof on The Hangover (2009), The Hunger Games (2012) and other movies, TV series etc. 4 men, with hangovers after a bachelor party, find themselves in a future, dystopian, kill or be killed game.

Cast

A combination of people who should be ashamed of themselves being involved in something like this and pitiful folks like Tara Reid & Jamie Kennedy who will take any script they're offered. Caitlyn Jenner is also present, for some reason.

Verdict

We went through a spate of these types of movies, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans etc and let's be honest the one consistent thing about them is that they were all truly unconditionally awful.

The Hungover Games is the same thing, please allow me to break it down for you. Loosely splice two current popular movies concepts, throw in lots of current pop culture references and characters (All the things currently trending), incorporate humor befitting an 8 year old and boom you have yourself 90 minutes of stupidity off the scale.

The Hungover Games also slaps us with overwhelming levels of "T&A" which returns to the 8 year old mentality.

Never mind Panto, this is where careers go to die.

Rants

Who are these films for? I genuinely don't understand it. It's not loaded with easter eggs and neat references people will appreciate, the Avatar character for example is just a naked woman painted blue who contributes nothing and is only on screen briefly. The humor is juvenile but the movie rating is too high for children, adult's will find it infantile, there is no real plot, the cast don't even try, it's just all so truly terrible! Why do films like this exist?

Breakdown

Cast phone everything in Offensively unfunny Stupid beyond words Kennedy, Reid and Jenner!

I saw this for free on IMDb's Freedrive and it was "meh". I did laugh at a few scenes, but that was it. While this film was still a letdown, I will say this; It wasn't insultingly unfunny like, say Epic Movie or Disaster Movie. There was a least some attempts at humor and they actually tried to make an actual parody film that wasn't full of irrelevant pop culture references that weren't funny (well, sorta), but compared to anything Setlzerberg has made, I give this an E for effort. It doesn't help that like Epic Movie, this film also features cameos from Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp version) and Captain Jack Sparrow and those were even still dated, back when Epic Movie was in theaters, back in early 2007. If want to watch this on Freedrive, I'd say go ahead, just don't expect anything like Airplane or Scary Movie.