You know, looking over the release schedule a few months back the summer movie landscape seemed pretty clear. On the comedy front there was really only one big title that mattered, right? Brüno was coming, and in the face of the gay Austrian juggernaut, nothing else really mattered on the comedy front. Right? Right? Nope.  Totally wrong. The Hangover is absolutely, without a doubt, the very best mainstream comedy to hit screens since The 40 Year Old Virgin. Remember that one? The film that did massive business before launching two previously minor stars - Steve Carell and Seth Rogen in that case - into the top tier of the big screen comedy world? This one stars three similarly bit players with nothing but support roles on their collective resume before now, but now that the film is hitting screens the only question remaining is which of Ed Helms (Carell's Office-mate), Bradley Cooper or Zach Galifianakis will make like Rogen and Carell and move to the front of the class.  My money's on all three.

The story is simple. Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married and best friends Phil (Cooper) and Stu (Helms), along with soon to be brother-in-law Alan (Galifianakis) are taking him to Las Vegas for one final blow out of a bachelor party. Phil is the cynical married man, the would-be playboy pushing against his safe life as a school teacher. Stu is the hen-pecked dentist, always playing it safe and considering proposing to his overbearing girlfriend. For Alan, borderline mental health and developmental disorders abound -- he's an odd man in an odd body latching on to the rest as rare potential friends.

The plans? Huge! The night? Huge-er! So huge, in fact, that Phil, Stu and Alan wake up the next morning, their hotel suite trashed beyond words, a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the cupboard and Doug vanished without a trace. Vanished, kind of like the trio's memory. And so the race is on, the race for Phil, Stu and Alan to reconstruct their night and find Doug before his bride-to-be walks down the aisle and realizes her groom isn't waiting at the other end.

When director Todd Phillips burst on to the comedy scene with Old School it was obvious that a major new talent had arrived.  Despite the ludicrous situations, the gross out comedy and the extreme slapstick, Old School was, at its core, a comedy about a group of guys struggling against age and trying simply to remain true to each other and their friendship. The Hangover is more of the same, only better. Immensely quotable, full of situations absurd in the extreme and frequently laugh-until-you-cry funny, The Hangover succeeds ultimately not because of how good the punchlines are - and they are very good - but because the punchlines come out of these very believable characters played to perfection by an experienced and adept cast. You believe these guys. Hell, you probably know these guys or maybe even are one of these guys. And that just makes the humor work even better. 

Incredibly well written and shot by the same man who was behind the camera for indie hits The Chumscrubber and Garden State, The Hangover is just a surprisingly well put together film, one that would probably draw awards attention for its writing and technical merits if not for the fact that it was a comedy.  And that's strangely appropriate. Because as much as this is a gross out comedy - and any film that includes a man being tasered in the testicles certainly qualifies for that tag - it is also a film about real people in a real (albeit bizarre) world trying to make at least a little bit of sense out of adulthood. A film with real characters that's also as funny as hell? Get ready Brüno, you've got a whale of a fight for the 2009 comedy crown on your hands.