‘The Hangover’ on Netflix: Bradley Cooper Has Come a Long Way From Playing Pretty Boy Jerks

Now that The Hangover is streaming on Netflix, it feels like a good time to ask: Hey, does anybody else remember when Bradley Cooper wasn’t an A-list, seven-time Oscar-nominated superstar, and was, to a large group of people, just the hot dude from The Hangover? Does that era of Bradley Cooper-dom not feel like a million years ago?

In fact, The Hangover was only ten years ago. That’s right, in the year 2009—the same year we got Avatar, Star Trek, and The Social Network—The Hangover became the number one comedy in America, with Cooper leading the charge. In 2019, Cooper is known for his gravelly-voice, tear-jerking performance as Jackson Maine, the fictional country singer in A Star is Born. Or he’s known as the impressive first-time director of A Star is Born, the third remake of the classic 1937 film, which was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture. Five years ago, he was known for the voice of the tells-it-like-it-is talking raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy, and two years before that, in 2012, he was known for playing a difficult-but-charming man with bipolar disorder opposite Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook. A year earlier still, he was a grungy action hero in sci-fi thriller Limitless. 

And then there’s The Hangover, the role that introduced Cooper to the wider public. (Unless you were an Alias superfan, or recognized him from his supporting role in Wedding Crashers—but I’m talking about the general population of casual entertainment fans, nerds.) In The Hangover, Cooper is not a tortured soul haunted by his past. He is not a manic, coiled ball of energy. He is simply your run-of-the-mill cocky, beautiful asshole named Phil. Phil is the best friend of the groom-to-be, Doug (Justin Bartha) and the clear leader of Doug’s bachelor party, which includes Phil, their nerdy friend Stu (Ed Helms), and Doug’s odd brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis). As the cool-guy straight-man, Cooper hardly got any of the quotable lines of the film—the vast majority of those went to Galifianakis, with a few leftovers for Helms, and a negative amount to Cooper. Cooper’s job mainly consisted of swaggering around in a nice button-up, wearing aviators, and scoffing at the much less-cool men around him.

The film was something of a big deal when it came out—it was the highest-grossing R-rated movie of 2009, and the sixth highest-grossing film of the year overall. Perhaps more surprisingly, critics generally liked it—as much as they could possibly like any gross-out R-rated comedy—and most were understandably focused on Galifianakis as the breakout performer. (The exception being A.O. Scott of The New York Times, who saw something special in Cooper. Man, that guy is good. It’s almost like he’s a critic at one of the top papers in the world or something.) After A Star is Born, it’s hard to imagine a Bradley Cooper film today where the main critical focus wasn’t Cooper—almost as hard as it is to imagine a Bradley Cooper film where the star’s big scene is to mock someone for wearing a “man purse.” But, hey, that’s what we in the business call “growth.”

If you, too, would like to marvel at Cooper’s amazing trajectory from pretty-boy jerk to Academy Award-nominated A-lister, go ahead and give The Hangover a stream on Netflix. Just remember: What happens in culturally insensitive 2009 blockbuster comedies stays in culturally insensitive 2009 blockbuster comedies.

Watch The Hangover on Netflix