Added Attractions

There’s also a longer version of the song in which the other brother,the good Guddu,falls in love with his Maharashtrian spitfire. Much as we are glad that the beginning was changed,we are not happy that this was left out — it tells the backstory of the lovers much better than what’s been left in. We laud the editors for keeping the climax shorter though: the original version is more tiresome,with more smoke and noise and people falling about and clutching bloody chests.

The detailed “Making Of” segment has the director and the main actors talking about how the film came to them and how they went about making it. And Bhardwaj comes across as a thinking guy,at work on what he calls the most difficult film of his career.

The Hangover made enough people laugh around the globe for producers Warner Bros to dub it the “funniest comedy of the year”. It’s not only Americans who make such a song and dance about bachelor parties. It is apparently a wildly popular urban phenom. A man about to get married needs to break out — if it is Las Vegas,great; if not,it matters not. All you need is four red-blooded male pals with healthy credit cards,and a desire to live it up one last time.

The just-out DVD has a great section called the Destruction Map: each location that the characters trash,and get trashed at,is brought into deep focus. The classic hotels (no sets,the director wanted the charge a great hotel gives off),the suites,the hospital,the police station,the church,the parking lot,the stretch of desert and,of course,Mike Tyson’s home with the tiger and the bodyguards all get their two bits of airtime. (For those who haven’t seen the film,there’s a tiger who happens to belong to Tyson and who gets to roar a lot).

All the hungover men — Bradley Cooper,Ed Helms,Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha — recount their stories,and they are all very funny. The Hangover is a classic pre-wedding buddy movie.