The Hangover: What Happens in Vegas Always Happens in Vegas

If you're making a movie set in Las Vegas, there are pretty much three storylines you can choose from. Someone in your movie is either going to rob a casino, participate in a sporting event or, most commonly, make some bad life decisions. It could be booze, drugs, sex or gambling, but there's a good chance your main character is going to get mixed up in one of those things, and it's going to work out badly. Since The Hangover follows the survivors of a Vegas bachelor party gone horribly awry, we thought we'd run down some of our favorite "going crazy in Sin City" movies.

Things Are Tough All Over (1982)
Cheech and Chong aren't for everyone, but under the right circumstances (coughtotallyhighcough), they're hysterical. This movie starts out in Chicago, but hijinks ensue when the stoner duo are hired to drive a limo to Las Vegas for some Middle Eastern oilmen. And by hijinks, I mean pornography and peyote.

Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)
Probably one of the last times Nicolas Cage didn't make us sleepy or violently ill, this movie saw James Caan conning Cage into giving him his fiancee (Sarah Jessica Parker) for a weekend. A madcap romp full of SJP sexiness and Flying Elvises.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Cage returns to the strip in this tearjerker, drinking himself to death, although sadly not in real life. And yes, watching Cage in this movie made us ill, although that was pretty much the whole point.

Showgirls (1995)
One of our (meaning America's) guilty pleasures, this Paul Verhoeven film follows Elizabeth Berkeley's farmgirl character as she hitchhikes into Vegas, becomes a stripper, then a showgirl, then an ass-kicking deliverer of justice before hitchhiking out again. Take that, America-- I mean, Vegas!

Swingers (1996)
A young Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau re-introduce "Vegas, baby" to the national parlance, spending a crazy night in the city of sin to try and help Favreau forget about an ex by gambling and hooking up with waitresses. Double down!

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
The ultimate "going crazy in Vegas" movie, based on the book by the ultimate "going crazy in [insert town name here]" journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. Johnny Depp channels Thompson's drug-fueled paranoia and hallucinations, helped out by Benicio Del Toro's coked-up Samoan attorney and director Terry Gilliam's gruesome renditions of Ralph Steadman's crazy book illustrations. After a while, they can't even leave the hotel room, let alone handle Circus Circus.

Very Bad Things (1998)
Look up "black comedy" in the dictionary, and there's a picture of Christian Slater wielding a chainsaw, which also happens to be the poster for this movie. Jeremy Piven lives the tasteless joke by accidentally killing a stripper at a bachelor party, and guilt and suspicion tear the group apart, resulting in death and paralysis. Ha ha ha! Wheee!

Go (1999)
An interwoven blend of three different stories, one centers on Taye Diggs going on a jaunt to Vegas with his wacky British ecstasy dealer friend. While there, they steal a car, slap a stripper's ass and shoot a bouncer before hightailing it home.

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005)
Our love for comedic Sandra Bullock should probably know some bounds. But a dowdy FBI agent going undercover as a showgirl in Vegas? That is where comedy lies, my friends.

What Happens in Vegas (2008)
...is only worth seeing for Zach Galifianakis, and The Hangover has rendered that moot.

Finding Amanda (2008)
Matthew Broderick plays a recovering gambler and alcoholic who offers to go track down his wife's wayward niece in temptation-filled Vegas. His wife's niece is a prostitute, played by Brittany Snow, a.k.a. Young Lily van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl. We shall say no more.

What's your favorite Vegas movie? Roll them bones below.

15 Comments

June 2, 2009 5:11 PM
Jeff Holland
Reply

I still have nightmares about the end of "Very Bad Things." Even for THAT movie, it was...pretty harsh.

June 2, 2009 10:12 PM
Gimmecoffee
Reply

"Empire Records" has a Vegas start. While most of the movie doesn't take place in Vegas, one of the story lines (Lucas and the previous nights deposit money) drives a great chain of events.

June 3, 2009 3:51 AM
Catsy
Reply
replied to comment from Gimmecoffee

Lucas hits Atlantic City in "Empire Records", not Vegas. Still a great movie though.

June 3, 2009 12:03 PM
Shlee
Reply

What about Ocean's Eleven? Great movie, all Vegas.

June 3, 2009 12:24 PM
ThunderCatsHo!
Reply

Empire Records is set in New Jersey, Lucas goes to Atlantic City, not a Vegas movie...Sorry Gimmecoffee.
Best Vegas Movie-Casino

June 3, 2009 1:15 PM
Reedo
Reply

Vegas Vacation - notable for being one of the movies in which the Griswold daughter is hot.

June 3, 2009 1:31 PM
Michelle
Reply

Fools Rush In is my absolute favorite

June 3, 2009 3:54 PM
Backup
Reply

What, no Ocean's 11?

June 3, 2009 5:08 PM
rick
Reply

Casino is the greatest Las Vegas movie. But I can see where it would not be placed on this list as it is an intriguing history of the mob in Las Vegas and not merely a liquor, drug and stripper fueled romp. But if it is mayhem you want, Casino is the movie to watch.

June 10, 2009 12:55 AM
Ali Y.
Reply

“The Hangover” is a worthy entrant into the “guy movie” hall of fame. It’s got laughs, drugs, tomfoolery, bodily harm, strippers, and a Mike Tyson cameo. The movie is about a trip to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, and the events of which are recounted as the characters sober up, and look into payday loans to cover the money they spent. Films detailing "lost weekends" spent in Sin City are becoming a genre unto themselves, as the town is noted for a touch of Bacchanalian excess, with tradition extending before Hunter Thompsons' landmark novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Still, there ought to be plenty of payday cash for the producers if receipts match "The Hangover" reviews.

July 30, 2009 2:43 PM
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December 15, 2011 6:19 PM
Jovita Cappellano
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Rude contact with facts chased my visions and dreams quickly away, and in their stead I beheld the horrors, the corruption, the evils and hypocrisy of society, and as I stood among them, a young wife, a great wail of agony went out from my soul.

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