Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

“Win Win” is the film I’m going to recommend to the next person who tells me how much they loved “The Blind Side.”  It’s essentially the same plot, but without the troubling racial dynamics, the unsettling shots of luxurious wealth, the general heavy-handedness, and Sandra Bullock.

Paul Giamatti is a struggling lawyer who makes himself the guardian of a rich old man so that he can take home the monthly allowance, then puts the old man in a home and forgets about him.  It’s possible (but not necessary) to view “Win Win” as a kind of moral fable, and within that framework, this is the sin for which Giamatti will do penance as the movie progresses.  Alex Shaffer is the old man’s grandson, and he turns up on Giamatti’s doorstep, thinking his grandpa lives there. Giamatti and his wife (Amy Ryan) take the troubled kid in and love on him.  Turns out he’s an all-star wrestler. Did I mention that Giamatti coaches the high school wrestling team, and they’re terrible?   See how this all sounds familiar?  But it’s executed as if the material isn’t as tired as it ought to be, and the result is pretty winning, I must say.

Shaffer is a nonprofessional actor who was cast because he could wrestle, and his performance is pretty monotone, which mostly works to counterbalance the naked sentimentality of the material. But, just as in “Blind Side,” this also makes the hero of the story look like a blank canvas upon which everyone around him paint their ambitions. Ryan wants to do a good deed for a decent kid.  Giamatti’s best friend (Bobby Canavale, a McCarthy favorite who is always fun to watch) who makes himself an assistant coach on the wrestling team, just wants to be associated with a winner.  And the kid’s drug addict mom shows up and wants her son back, but mostly so she can look like she’s pulling her life together, take custody of her dad, and get those monthly allowances for herself.

In the middle of all that is Giamatti, and it seems like he’d really like to do the right thing, if he can figure out what that is, amidst all the voices around him.  He knows he’s taking advantage of the grandpa, and probably the grandson as well, but doesn’t want anyone to get hurt by any of it.  In the end, he makes a sacrificial choice to take care of people around him, an arrangement that benefits everyone but him.   Except that now he’s not taking advantage of anybody, and everyone’s better off because of his hard work.  He’s come full circle as a character, and maybe that’s the point.

“Win Win” is carefully handled material, as if these veteran actors (and one amateur) and sure-handed director know just how close they are to slipping off into Hallmark Channel cheesiness.  It’s not as good as McCarthy’s last two films, both of which are personal favorites.  But it walks along the edge of the cheese surprisingly well, and, as a result, turns out to be a film the indie auteurs and Barbra Streisand fans might be able to watch together without anyone sighing or rolling their eyes.

When I was in high school, we had to take standardized writing tests.   (It’s hard to standardize writing, but standardized tests are what school’s about, right?)  There were lots of categories – persuasive, biographical, etc.  If you were lucky, you got “imaginative.”   And you were given a setup – an unopened letter, a 30 year journey, a dying word – and asked to write the story that explains it.    I totally failed this test.

Credit the writers of “The Hangover” — Jon Lucas & Scott Moore – with creating the granddaddy of all setups.   Four guys travel to Vegas for a bachelor party.   Three of them wake up the next morning.  There’s a tiger in the bathroom, a chicken under the piano, and a baby in the closet.   One of the guys is missing a tooth.  None of them can remember a thing.  Furthermore, a few things are missing: a mattress, and the guy who was sleeping on it.  The groom.

Oh, the stories that could unfold from such a setup.  I guarantee you could give it to a hundred different writers, and get vastly, wildly different stories back from them.  About half of those stories would be really good, and a handful might be brilliant.   Sadly, the story Lucas & Moore wrote isn’t brilliant.  It’s pretty good, but still, a bit disappointing.

The three guys are Bradley Cooper, the slick, self-centered ladies’ man, Stu, the uptight and henpecked dentist (his girlfriend is so awful you know within five minutes of meeting her that he’s destined to leave her before the film is over) and Zach Galifianakis, the bride’s brother, who is… an enigma.   A child molester?   A few bricks short of a load?   Asperger’s syndrome?    Maybe.    Oh, and there’s also a groom, but he’s hardly in the movie, so it’s okay that he doesn’t have much personality to speak of.

“The Hangover” spends a little time letting us get to know these guys, and then The Night happens.   And the next day is spent trying to figure out what happened, and where the groom is.   One of the fun things about “The Hangover” is that the weirdness keeps coming – after you think you’ve seen it all, the valet brings back a cop car.   And Mike Tyson shows up at the hotel.   And there’s a naked guy in the trunk.   This is good stuff.

But what’s disappointing about it all is that everything gets explained, and nothing amounts to anything.    Basically, they got drunk and did some random, stupid stuff.  Everything remains disconnected.   The tiger has nothing to do with the baby, which as nothing to do with the mattress on the roof.   (The chicken never is explained, but really, do chickens have to be explained?)   “The Hangover” has a chance to be a great one-thing-led-to-another-and-it-all-made-sense-at-the-time flick – a film like Scorsese’s immortal “After Hours” — but completely strikes out on that count.    Yeah, some funny stuff happens, and some stuff that’s supposed to be funny (the tazer scene, for instance) happens, but none of it goes anywhere, or amounts to anything.    The thing about a great setup: it needs an even better payoff.  And “The Hangover” can’t deliver.

It’s easy to get caught up on what “The Hangover” could have been and miss what it actually is.   Really, this is a pretty funny movie.  It’s at least above average.   Galifianakis, in particular, has incredible timing and a great delivery.   Half the time he just seems to be riffing on whatever’s around him, dropping non sequiturs deadpan.   Mike Tyson dancing to Phil Collins is brilliant, and Ken Jeong has an awful lot of fun as a diminutive Asian gangster.    It’s fast-paced, quite often smart and sharp, more than occasionally hilarious.   As the old folks used to say, a good time will be had by all.

It just won’t be one you’ll particularly want to see again.  That’s all.

Recommended

• if you’re looking for summer comedy at the theaters.   It’s better than anything else out there right now.
• if you loved (and watched repeatedly) “Old School” and “Road Trip.”
• if you really don’t mind forgetting a movie as soon as you’ve watched it.

Not Recommended

• if you’re a frustrated comic or screenwriter.   You’ll spend the whole movie thinking of ways you could’ve written it better.