Hey Bradley Cooper, why would you agree to star in The Hangover Part III?

UPDATE: Comments on the pajiba.com interview below are seeming to indicate it might be a fake, though this isn’t certain. We’ll update this story again once the details become clear.

With successful dramatic roles in films including Silver Linings Playbook and The Place Beyond the Pines, more than a few people have probably wondered why the heck talented — and increasingly acclaimed — actor Bradley Cooper would make a third instalment of the Hangover series.

Well, pajiba.com film reviewer Dustin Rowles though he would come right out and ask Cooper: Is he doing this out of some sense of obligation? Does he need the money? Why is he still “playing a douchebag in a series of road trip comedies?”

The result of asking the question that everyone is wondering about is a “painfully awkward” interview, as the headline reads.

Despite his best attempts, however, Rowles can’t quite get Cooper to admit that The Hangover Part III is a pretty bad movie.

Here’s part of the interview, which is in full here:

Pajiba: …I find it strange that, with as much success as you’ve had in these Oscar caliber movies, you returned to The Hangover. Do you feel a sense of obligation?

Cooper: What do you mean by that?

Pajiba: Well, I mean, given your place in Hollywood now, you don’t really have to be doing comedy sequels.

Cooper: I don’t know if anyone has a “place” in Hollywood. It’s all very tenuous, and I feel very blessed that I’ve been able to string together a successful series of jobs. This could all disappear at any moment.

Rowles goes on to tell Cooper that he didn’t find the film funny at all, even though the first Hangover movie was, by most accounts, pretty hilarious.

Just in case anyone is wondering, Rowles isn’t alone in his harsh opinion of the third Hangover film. To recap, here a handful of the other things critics are saying about The Hangover Part III, which opens this weekend.

From The Globe and Mail:

So the second didn’t have to be funny, and wasn’t, but at least existed somewhere in the general vicinity of that borderless country known as Comedy. Part III doesn’t, not even remotely, which makes it not just bad, but weirdly, fascinatingly bad. What exactly is this? Certainly a cash cow, definitely an exercise in cynicism, maybe even a cri de coeur from the self-hating principals. Whatever, a comedy it ain’t.

From The Independent:

It’s a curious thing to watch, because all the comic architecture is in place, the rhythms of comic interplay are at work, the lines are delivered with a comic relish – and yet almost nothing in it is funny.

From Time:

The Hangover Part III gives off such a stench of creative decay that it hardly seems possible that even Phillips or his co-writers have any use for the movie themselves. If a movie can be self-loathing and self-destructive, it’s this one.

From The New York Times:

The Wolfpack rides again. Or rather, it limps exhaustedly over the tundra in what is billed as the final edition of the “Hangover” trilogy. Defanged, with glazed eyes and creaking joints, these superannuated party animals try vainly to stir up some enthusiasm during a return visit to Las Vegas, the site of the first “Hangover” movie. But their heart isn’t in it.

You get the idea.