June 6, 2011 Issue

I feel a tad guilty picking David Denby’s “The Hangover Part II” review for comment when there are several articles on much more serious matters in the magazine this week to choose from. But seriousness is not my ultimate guide, as I navigate my way through the magazine’s riches; pleasure is. And Denby’s review, titled “Where The Boys Are,” is a tremendous source of reading pleasure, in terms of both analysis and description. It’s also illustrated by a terrific, eye-catching, Pepto-Bismol pink artwork by Kirsten Ulve. The first film, The Hangover (2009), received only a brief “Now Playing” blurb in The New Yorker. But the piece, written by Bruce Diones, was enthusiastic: see “Goings On About Town,” The New Yorker, June 22, 2009, in which Diones says, among other things, “what makes this bromance work is the performers’ contagious camaraderie.” Now the sequel has caught Denby’s attention, and he’s written a dandy review. What I like about it is, firstly, that it illuminates The Hangover’s clever structure. Denby says,

Philips and the first set of screenwriters, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, did something brilliant in “The Hangover.” They showed us not the long night of vice but the longer day after it, when the men, stone-cold sober, are forced to realize, with increasing horror what they have done to the world and to themselves in the preceding twelve hours.

Secondly, I like Denby’s humor. For example, he says,

The two movies offer a comedy of types, a kind of Freudian allegory, with Bradley-Cooper enacting the ego, Ed Helms the superego, and Zach Galifianakis the id. Or, to put it more simply, aggression, caution, and stupidity.

And thirdly, I like this description:

“The Hangover” has the physical freedom and the wildness of a great silent comedy, though, heaven knows, none of the innocence.

For all these reasons, David Denby’s “Where The Boys Are” is this week’s Pick Of The Issue.

Credit: The above artwork is by Kirsten Ulve; it appears in The New Yorker, June 6, 2011, as an illustration for David Denby's "Where The Boys Are."