Laughed Until I Covered My Face

For years Eurotrip held the title in our group—absolute law, beyond argument. A bunch of teenagers drinking and fucking their way across Europe, making out with their siblings, befriending hooligans, messing with the Pope. Scotty doesn’t know. That film was sacred, and the idea that anything would ever displace it felt genuinely impossible.

Then I finally saw The Hangover.

The story, the three leads, Mike Tyson with his face tattoo and a live tiger in the bathroom—I laughed until I couldn’t breathe, covered my face with both hands, made sounds in that cinema I’m not entirely proud of. Something about the rhythm of that film is mechanically perfect. Every beat lands exactly where it needs to. Nothing is wasted.

What you feel watching it is that the filmmakers knew they had something. That confidence is visible in every scene. No hedging, no safety net, just total commitment to the bit. It works because they believed it would work before anyone else had seen a frame of it.

The Hangover has become the ceiling now. I genuinely feel sorry for any comedy coming out after it, because the comparison is just sitting there, waiting, and almost nothing is going to survive it.