Bradley Cooper goes all in with The Hangover

Classical music is being pumped through the speakers in the Windsor Arms Hotel's Tea Room, as The Hangover's Bradley Cooper is offering three things that make a good bachelor party.

"Condoms, any sort of Muppet...and ice. You fill in the blanks," he says with a wide grin.

Surrounded by fussy tablecloths and bathed in natural light, this setting could not be more at odds with the depraved Las Vegas-set bachelor-cum-search party in which Cooper's character finds himself entangled after a night of hard drinking, hospital visits and, of course, gambling.

The hysterical cast - including Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha - combined with a script that ups the ante on the What Happens in Vegas mantra means big laughs and a story whose structure has more in common with Memento than Wedding Crashers.

Granted, the men are still broadly-drawn archetypes - the anal-retentive cuckold, the weirdo burnout, the handsome big-talker and the nice guy - but The Hangover succeeds, in large part, because the audience is invited to discover each hilarious infraction and bad, bad decision alongside the bumbling gang.

"It’s a detective story, it's a mystery," says Cooper while in Toronto to promote the film. "And in the process of being on that ride, you learn about these three guys. It's like a wonderful little puzzle that the writers have made."

Don't believe everything you read

After somehow losing the groom, Cooper's character Phil - the aforementioned big-talker - wrangles his bleary-eyed cohorts and sets about retracing their wobbly steps before anyone back home is the wiser. Indeed, The Hangover also represents the Philadelphia native's first lead role, one that has translated into much online murmuring, including dating rumours and casting buzz.

"It's so weird - I don't know where all of this is coming from,” he says with a laugh. “It's so odd. It certainly sounds like I have a very exciting life. I'd like to meet that guy.”

But after playing a philanderer in He's Just Not That Into You, a slimy blow-hard in Wedding Crashers and now a married man who can't escape his family fast enough, Cooper runs the risk of being pigeon-holed as that man our mothers warned us about. But he sees his Hangover character in a different light.

"I don't think Phil's a jerk at all. He's the guy who pulls it all together...he's able to justify it. You realize throughout the movie, he tries to bring everybody together and tries to solve everything. His buddies mean everything to him...I actually knew fathers like him growing up. You know, they talk a big game but it's only because they're at every Little League game - their life is their family."

For a buddy movie like this to work, the tightly-knit relationship between the male leads has to be as realistic as possible, especially given what they, ahem, go through together. Cooper reveals that although he knew Galifianakis, he'd only met Helms before "in passing", making their palpable camaraderie all the more impressive.

"I knew Zach a little bit. He used to have a show on VH1 that I did years ago and I used to watch him do stand-up in Vancouver [when] we were both doing a TV show [there]. But we got very lucky in this movie that everybody really loved each other. And that's all because of Todd Phillips at the helm - he's incredible. I think this is his best film yet."

With a CV that includes the Will Ferrell laffer Old School, not to mention Starsky & Hutch and Road Trip, writer-director-producer Phillips is certainly carving out a comedic niche for himself, one that Cooper was keen on exploring thanks to the film’s ingenious opening.

"Before I met Todd, it was the scene at the beginning - the hook - where [Phil] says, 'Yeah, that's not going to happen' in the desert. I loved that scene - I just thought it was hilarious. I could visualize how I saw it being filmed and thought, 'Oh, I can do that.' And that was the hook for me.”

Vegas or bust

For a movie that dares to step outside the confines of a typical comedy, there's still plenty of humour - from accidental nuptials to Mike Tyson's air drumming - and a great deal of Vegas-approved behaviour. But did the actors get to indulge while filming in the other City That Never Sleeps?

"I'd say that most of what we did is in the movie," Cooper says with a straight face.

Joking aside, he confesses that between long shooting days and commutes back to LA, there was little time for much besides quiet dinners and sleeping. Except for that one night.

"Zach and I went to Nick Cannon's birthday party. We snuck into Pure. And saw Mariah Carey."

As for what else they got up to - well, that stays in Vegas.

The Hangover opens in Cineplex Theatres June 5.

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