Trailer Trashin’: The Hangover Meets Red in Last Vegas

The 2013 summer movie season continues on, with this week seeing the release of The Wolverine. It’s been getting some fairly good buzz, and I’m actually interested in seeing it. In the meantime, this week’s Trailer Trashin’ column looks at the upcoming comedy Last Vegas.

Premise: Billy (Michael Douglas), Paddy (Robert De Niro), Archie (Morgan Freeman), and Sam (Kevin Kline) have been best friends since childhood. So when Billy, the group’s sworn bachelor, finally proposes to his thirty-something girlfriend, the four head to Las Vegas with a plan to stop acting their ages and relive their glory days. However, upon arriving, the four quickly realize that the decades have transformed Sin City and tested their friendship in ways they never imagined. The Rat Pack may have once played the Sands, and Cirque du Soleil may now rule the Strip, but it’s these four who are taking over Vegas.

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My take: I have to admit, I haven’t been interested in the majority of Hollywood comedies in recent years. I have not seen anything brought to us by Judd Apatow, and I could not care less about The Hangover (2009) and its ilk. The recent comedies that I have liked are the films of Edgar Wright, genre comedies like Black Dynamite (2009) and Zombieland (2009), and some animated comedies. But, every once in a while, a more mainstream comedy catches my interest; one such film is Last Vegas, this fall’s upcoming comedy about a group of older guys going to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, which got my attention because of its awesome cast. Now the first trailer for Last Vegas has arrived, and it’s made me much more interested in the film than I was before.

The biggest thing that Last Vegas has going for it is its cast, particularly the four leads. Michael Douglas, who got a lot of acclaim earlier this year for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra, has the main role of Billy, and this looks like a good chance for him to stretch his comedic muscles and have some fun. As I said in my column about The Family back in June, Robert De Niro is still a great actor, and even though he’s been in a lot of bad movies, he can still do great things with the right material; I think his character here, who seems like the most curmudgeonly of the group, should be a fun role for him. Morgan Freeman has gotten a lot of mileage out of playing cool old guys for the last couple decades – see RED (2010) for a good recent example – and he’s always a welcome presence. Kevin Kline hasn’t been doing much high-profile work lately, and it’s nice to see him in a starring role again. We also briefly see Mary Steenburgen, who won an Oscar for Melvin and Howard (1980) and played Clara in Back to the Future Part III (1990), as a woman named Diana; I’m going to take a wild guess that she ends up being the love interest of one of the guys. I believe that’s Jerry Ferrara, best known as “Turtle” on Entourage, as the guy who mouths off at Billy and gets punched in the face by Paddy. And although they’re not seen in this trailer, rappers 50 Cent, T.I., and Redfoo will all be appearing as themselves.

The humor on display here looks really great. There are some really funny lines, like Archie saying he can’t drink, smoke, eat salt, or stay up late. The moment where the guys have no idea who 50 Cent is may be a pretty standard joke, but it’s pulled off well. And it’s capped with that great moment of Sam and Archie totally hung over, with the reveal that they’re on a revolving motorized bed just after one of them says it feels like the world is spinning. Of course, there is the danger that the film could end up just being a bunch of variations of the same joke of the guys being surprised by how things have changed, but I’m willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt.

In the end, there’s not much to say here. This is a great group of actors, and I’d be willing to watch them in just about any kind of film. Of course, a comedy will always live or die on the strength of its writing, but what we’ve seen so far is encouraging. I’ll wait to see what the reviews are like, but when the beginning of November rolls around, there’s definitely a chance that I’ll be seeing Last Vegas.

ANTICIPATION: This definitely looks like it could be a trip worth taking.

Release Date: November 1^st, 2013

Starring: Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara, Weronika Rosati, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, T.I., and Redfoo
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Writers: Adam Brooks and Dan Fogelman