Gender-swapped reboots of our favorite movies burst out of Hollywood with a roar but left the box office with a whimper. Pre-pandemic America seemed to be on a roll to reboot all of our favorite ensemble classics with an all-female cast. And despite receiving generally positive reviews, movies like Ocean’s 8 and Ghostbusters (2016) divided audiences and left the public feeling more angry than delighted. It’s difficult to tell why a movie flops when viewers turn it into a political issue. But even as politics invades entertainment, there might be one comedy that could be gender-swapped and still unite us all: The Hangover.
Not all of us bust ghosts or steal diamonds. But almost every human on the planet has gotten drunk and made horrible decisions. The Hangover was a movie that everyone could relate to. Even female viewers knew the pain of waking up with a disorienting headache and no idea where they were last night. People enjoyed The Hangover for its far-gone drunken insanity, and a girls’ night out is a different flavor with just the same intensity. A post-pandemic Hollywood may have put enough space between itself and previous gender-swapping failures that it may be the right time for The Hangover girls’ reboot.
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The Hangover: Girls’ Night Out
Warner Bros. Discovery
The Hangover was a movie that we all loved just because of how outrageous it was. Sure, a lot of us have gotten blackout drunk, but very few have woken up next to a tiger. That ridiculous hyperbole of a drunken night out was a type of crazy that everyone could relate to. The Hangover was such a silly movie that a lot of us forgot there was a plot to it in the first place.
The Hangover with a female cast would just essentially be Bridesmaids 2. There was no supernatural threat or some lofty goal, the only objective was to survive the most incredible party anyone had ever had in Vegas. Ghostbusters (2016) may have threatened some sense of male nostalgia, and Ocean’s 8 was unfortunately a victim of that preconceived notion. But The Hangover didn’t establish any kind of cult following, nor did it hold some kind of long-standing reputation. It was just a really good party movie.
Gender-swapping The Hangover would give viewers a look at just how off the rails a girls’ night out can go. It’s not unreasonable to think there may be some pushback from the internet, but selling the film as more of a party movie (Project X, Superbad) and less of a good film might be a good idea.
Though the genre does usually appeal more to a male demographic, Bridesmaids did quite well across the board. And it was a movie that understood the nonsense of what it was depicting. Because that’s where the spirit of The Hangover thrives. Not in its skillful narrative, or sense of familiarity, but in the pure chaos of a night gone wrong. The pandemic has put some distance between the public and the controversy of movies like Ocean’s 8 and there hasn’t been a good film about a party in a while. A girls’ version of The Hangover is brimming with possibility and deserves to be made.
Gender-Swapped Movies and Hollywood
Legendary Pictures
Gender-swapped movies have actually done very well in the past, but usually when they are less visible. His Girl Friday, going all the way back to 1940, became part of Hollywood history when it premiered, and Rosalind Russell’s character was originally written for a man. Closer to today in 2018, Ophelia told the story of Hamlet but from the point of view of his bride-to-be. These movies weren’t sold as female-led and nor did they switch out the entire cast for another gender, but they were both successful films that centered on women when the stories originally focused on men.
Ghostbusters (2016) and Ocean’s 8, unfortunately, crashed when they might have succeeded. When Ghostbusters came out in 2016, people immediately saw the switch to an all-female cast as some sort of gimmick. There was a huge uproar from male fans of the original Ghostbusters films. They took this reboot as some kind of trick that stole the original IP somehow. And when Ocean’s 8 came out two years later, it was taken exactly the same way. The discourse around these movies became one that centered exclusively around gender, and their merits were hardly discussed in any other context. Hollywood will have to put some distance between itself and the protests that came against these movies before making another one.
But perhaps the pandemic was exactly the space that movie culture needed. That two-year space without movies or production might have reset the public in a way. Maybe four years between us and Ocean’s 8 is enough for us to look at women’s ensemble movies in a different light. It would be nice to get back to a time like 2011, when the tagline for Bridesmaids was literally, “Chick flicks don’t have to suck.”
These films have real potential to be funny, but people seem to have forgotten how much they enjoyed them in the past. The Hangover might be the right franchise to remind us all why we enjoy these movies in the first place, not for nostalgia, or for social justice, but just to have a little bit of fun.
