It’s very rare for a movie to leave little to no impression on me, yet there I was at dinner after seeing The Hangover Part III struggling to remember any funny moments or sequences from the film.  I admit that I didn’t go into the film with the strongest of expectations, having truly enjoyed The Hangover back in 2009 and absolutely hating The Hangover Part II when I caught it on HBO this past summer.  But yet there I was, and I couldn’t toss back a single funny line or moment, instead searching through my head for any reason why the movie even needed to exist.

I think the biggest struggle of the film is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Does the film want to be a comedy? Does the film want to be a ridiculous heist movie, sort of a dark-comedy Ocean’s 11? Are they just trying to make a third film happen to meet a contractual demand?  It’s very hard to say.  The plot is somewhat scattershot - Alan (Zach Galifinakis, who remains funny in this film, but could honestly be funny reading the phone book) has gone off of his meds, and is out of control. After a massive freeway accident (involving a decapitated giraffe), the stress kills Alan’s father (Jeffrey Tambor), and it’s up to the Wolfpack - Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Doug (Justin Bartha) - to convince him to check into a facility for help (a hilarious sounding setup on paper).  Somehow, their trip then intersects with a crime lord named Marshall (John Goodman, always great) who enlists the Wolfpack to find Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong) because, well, they knew him in the last two movies.  I get the connective tissue of the plot, but elements throughout the film seem to be placed simply to go “Hey guys! Remember this from the prior films? We’ve got it here! FULL CIRCLE! TRILOGY ENDS HERE!”  At least, that would explain the ultimately pointless cameo for Heather Graham.

I suppose my biggest issue is knowing how great all of the cast members can be outside of this film. Bradley Cooper wowed me in Silver Linings Playbook, Galifinakis is always hilarious, Ed Helms is a solid hand, John Goodman is one of my favorite actors, Ken Jeong has been doing solid work on Community and I think Justin Bartha is worth more than the 10 minutes he’s in these films before he’s removed simply because that’s what happened to him in the other movies.  Even Melissa McCarthy is wasted here. Even director Todd Phillips clearly wishes to be doing more. He’s always been one of the most experimental directors in comedy, giving each Hangover film a glossy edge most comedies don’t receive - I think he’s finally ready to graduate to new projects - perhaps even non-comedic ones.

At the end of the day The Hangover Part III fails because it’s a movie that feels like it exists only because it “has” to. If you do a sequel these days, it’s a given that you have to “complete” a trilogy, and honestly, this creative team would have been better off working on something else - no matter how great I’m sure the money is.

If you never see The Hangover Part III, you won’t be missing out. But if you do, yes, there is a credits stinger - and hopefully it’s the closest we will ever get to a Part IV.  Don’t waste your time or money on this one.