“It’s funny because he’s Jewish!” exclaims Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). “Don’t you get it?” Alan (Zach Galifianakis) sees the joke he’s trying to make, but doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t laugh, not only because it is, in fact, not funny at all, but also because he’s grown tired of Chow. And after sitting through all of the very misguided and bafflingly unfunny “The Hangover Part III,” I find myself siding with Alan for once.

After the disaster of “Part II,” which found director Todd Phillips and screenwriter Craig Mazin making a near beat-for-beat remake of the first film, “Part III” actually tries out an original plot. It fails horribly, but like a small child that makes you a really ugly sculpture in art class, you can at least appreciate the thought. Even if that thought is “let’s make our comic relief guy into the main character of the movie.” After a death in Alan’s family, the rest of the family along with Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Doug (Justin Bartha) convince Alan to get treatment for his mental problems. But on the way to the facility, they’re kidnapped by Marshall (John Goodman), who Chow has stolen $21 million in gold from. He takes Doug, and tells the rest of the wolfpack that they’re responsible for getting him his gold back.

From there, it becomes a tedious and idiotic journey with the occasional laugh and an odd amount of dramatic moments and attempts at big action. The action seems to take somewhat of a precedent over the comedy, and yet the action ranges from pointless and boring, to decent yet completely out of place. These movies never really had action before, yet for some reason it’s thrown in all over the place here. Top that off with an uncomfortable amount of animal abuse played for laughs (along with the line “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you worked for PETA. What a pussy.”) and writing so lazy that characters overcome obstacles by just using smartphone apps, and you get a really huge waste of $103 million dollars. Somehow, the more original sequel ended up being the worst of the Hangover trilogy, which is really saying something considering what a waste of time the second film was too. I’m not even sure that fans of the first two will be satisfied with “The Hangover Part III,” thanks to a really strange mix of flat action, strange character drama, and so few laughs I can count them on my fingers.

1.5/5 Stars