The Hangover

The Hangover is the most successful R-rated comedy of all time and the film that proved the mystery-comedy structure could work for a new generation. Todd Phillips took a simple premise — three groomsmen wake up in a destroyed Las Vegas hotel suite with no memory of the previous night, a tiger in the bathroom, and a missing groom — and built a comedy that is also a genuinely compelling detective story.

Zach Galifianakis' Alan Garner is one of the great comedy debuts of the century — a character so strange, so oblivious, and so oddly touching that he steals the film from established leads. The wolfpack dynamic between Cooper, Helms, and Galifianakis works because each actor occupies a different comedy register: Cooper is the straight man, Helms is the anxious reactor, and Galifianakis is the chaos agent. Together, they are the best comedy trio of the 2000s.

The film's structural innovation is its use of photographs during the end credits to reveal what actually happened. The audience spends the entire film piecing together clues, and the photos provide the payoff — each image more outrageous than the last. It is a perfect comedic device that has been imitated endlessly. The Hangover grossed $467M on a $35M budget and launched a franchise, but nothing matched the original's perfect balance of mystery, chaos, and heart.