There's a Tiger in the Bathroom!

The Hangover, at its core, is the story of a bachelor party in Las Vegas. The movie starts near the end, with a seeming disaster. The group has lost the groom and the lavish outdoor California wedding, scheduled to take place in five hours looks like it won’t be happening.

At this point the movie goes backward in time to the beginning of the story. At first, it seems pretty standard. A group of privileged white guys in their late twenties plan a bachelor party in Vegas. They take the groom’s future father in laws luxury convertible Mercedes and hit the road. The audience expects to see excessive alcohol consumption, some gambling, strippers and bad behavior. However, the movie is a clever comedy.

After arriving in Vegas, the four men toast on the roof of the hotel to ¨a night they will never forget¨. The toast is a clever use of irony, because the men have a night that they will never forget because it is a night they do not remember. When they wake up the next morning, their hotel room is completely trashed, the groom is missing and no one can remember anything. The writer uses hyperbole to communicate the completely outrageous nature of what has taken place. In addition alcohol and broken furniture everywhere, there is a rooster in the room, a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet and possibly the best use of irony, Stu, the dentist, has lost one of his incisors.