It’s not uncommon for those who have supped not wisely but too well to wake up the morning after and make heartfelt vows about their future behaviour.
If they haven’t taken enough water with their wine, or whisky, or whatever and are subsequently feeling a little the worse for wear, the promise usually goes something like this: “I am never, ever, going to do that again, because the hangover just isn’t worth it.”
And the next night that’s all forgotten as the party mood takes hold again and the idea of mixing drambuie and advocaat seems perfectly plausible.
And isn’t that just like life?
The Hangover, the first one, was a fitfully amusing comedy that was nowhere near as funny as it thought it was.
The tale of hapless pals coming to grief through grog made a bucket of money, and the sensible thing to have done would have been to toast the unexpected success and move on.
Not a chance. A sequel was a certainty, complete with Sex And The City ‘let’s send the gang abroard’ cop-out plot line.
It was pretty much a stinker, but that didn’t seem to matter – the punters still flocked back to see the same characters going much the same stuff in a slightly different setting.
And that’s when they should really have promised themselves that enough was enough, but we know better than that, don’t we?
So here comes the third instalment, and they’ll keep getting them in until you, the movie fan, cut them off or their livers explode, whichever comes first.
Bradley Cooper, presumably bound by an iron-clad contract after seeing his serious actor star rise in recent years, returns, men get drunk, it’s supposed to be funny. You may well giggle if you go along, but that doesn’t mean you won’t hate yourself in the morning.
Calling your epic new adventure Epic is asking for trouble, isn’t it?
It doesn’t help that people have been billing this as a sorted of animated Avatar, either.
But let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. The team behind Ice Age and Rio reckon this is best described as an action adventure comedy, and have recruited the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Colin Farrell and Christoph Waltz, among others, to provide the voices.
What goes on? Well, the forces of good are keeping the natural world spick and span and the forces of evil want to wreck it.
Then a teenage girl finds herself magically transported into this secret universe and has to team up with a mixed bag of characters to save the day.
It’s all very bright and shiny and wholesome, and is based on writer William Joyce’s bestsellers for younger readers, but worldly-wise youngsters may find themselves yawning.