for fun only?

i watched the hangover recently, which was a pretty damn funny movie. however, i'm worried about the message the movie unwittingly sends out.

in case you don't know, the movie is about four guy friends who go to vegas for a bachelor party of one of them. the "bachelor" is a nice guy, his soon-to-be bother-in-law is a weirdo, another friend is a married morally challanged "smart guy" who you can tell has gotten way wit tons stuff before, and the last friend is sort of straight laced who's is kept on a VERY short leash by his girlfriend (he tells her they're going to napa for the party, not vegas.). anyway, they're only supposed to spend one night in vegas before heading back to la for the day of preperations before wedding day. that night tho, they start it off with a round of shots from the weird guy's flask.

the next morning they wake up to find their hotel suite in shambles, with a tiger in the bathroom and a random don't-know-who's baby in the closet. they can't remember a thing from the night before. they're all missing brain and liver cells (one ended up in the hospital with broken ribs), one of them is missing a tooth but is married to an "escort," and they can't find the groom. antics ensue.

in the end, of course, everything comes up rosy. they find the groom, make $80k, don't end up in jail, make it to the wedding and ditch the controlling girlfriend. whew! to add icing on the cake, they find a camera that documents their "missing" night. apptly they found strippers, met various d-list celebrities, and in general looked like they had a whole lot of fun. yay!

...wtf? how can it possibly be all flowers and rainbows if you can't remember a fucking thing but ended up in the hospital and pulled out your own fucking tooth! you didn't actually have a fun time if you can't remember a moment of it. why doesn't the whole weekend scare the shit out of these people?! oh, right, because they got away with it all. they didn't end up in jail, you can always get a crown, and i'm sure no one came home wit vd. all of which would not happen in real life.

i understand that it's just a movie. and that most people understand that movies aren't real life. but come on. you're basically saying that it's okay to get drugged up and drink way too much and black out and not remember anything, because you're gonna have fun (that you can't remember), and you're gonna be okay, and everything will work itself out. no matter wat trouble you get yourself into while you're blacked out, you can talk yourself out of once you wake up. and imagine the stories you can tell!

while all the main players in the movie are male, imagine if this were a group of female friends. how much you wanna bet that in real life, at least one of them (if not all of them) would be raped, and likely, multiple times by multiple people. imagine even, that it was not real, and it was just a movie about four women who went to vegas for a bachlorette party and got drugged and drunk and did all things the boys did. do you think this movie would even make it past the idea pitching stage? no, of course not. because there are serious dangers for women who are blacked out. unlike for men. ...wait, no, that's not right either.

...get real, hollywood.