Reel Critics:

This movie is outrageous, hilarious and confusing as any alcoholic blackout in Las Vegas could ever be. “The Hangover” careens across the screen like a drunk driver on a screaming wild ride into unknown territory. Advancing the raucous themes of “Old School,” director Todd Phillips brings the art of inspired nonsense to a new level.

Four B-List actors play an unusual group of buddies. They go to Vegas for a bachelor fling before one of them gets married. Three of them wake up in a trashed hotel room after a night of drunken revelry. But the prospective groom is missing and the others have no memory of what happened the night before.

They begin to recreate the lost evening by following the trail they get from credit card receipts and other clues they find. As they uncover the sordid activities of the previous night, the story gets stranger, darker and more absurd. The twists and turns multiply with outlandish results at a lightning pace. It’s all wildly funny, but politically incorrect on so many levels.

The plot rolls over the boundaries of good taste like a bulldozer in a flower bed. But you’ll find yourself belching out embarrassing laughter while you cringe at the jokes that cause it. It’s crazy, brazen and brilliant in a perverse way. If you can handle R-rated guerrilla humor that takes no prisoners, you might enjoy this film.

‘Life’ like diet version of ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding’

The wheels on the bus go round and round but go nowhere in “My Life in Ruins,” a chick flick as one-dimensional as a postcard.

Nia Zardalos tries to recapture the spirit and charm that made “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” a delight in 2002. But this time, things have been homogenized, like Zardalos herself, and made oh so predictable. Even the glorious Greek scenery looks washed out. Mamma mia.

Perhaps the film would have benefited if Zardalos had a hand in the writing this time around, instead of just standing around like a Greek statue. Perhaps not.

Zardalos plays Georgia, an unemployed history professor who hits bottom as a second-rate tour guide in Athens. But hello! How could she fail to notice her hunky bus driver (Alexis Georgoulis)? Underneath that “Sasquatch” hair and baggy clothes you know there’s an Adonis ready to help Georgia get her groove back.

There’s the usual assortment of oddball tourists — a klepto senior, geeky middle manager, uptight Brit, and some loutish Americans to name a few.

And there’s Richard “I’ll Do It for Money” Dreyfuss hamming it up as Irv, who serves as clown prince/life coach and magically transforms them all into a big fat tub of tzatziki by movie’s end. Greece is the word.

JOHN DEPKO is a Costa Mesa resident and a senior investigator for the Orange County public defender’s office. SUSANNE PEREZ lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant for a financial services company.