Redefining screwball and reappropriating liminal spaces: the contemporary bromance and Todd Phillips' The Hangover DVD

This article argues that the central drives of the screwball genre are renegotiated in the recent spate of 'bromance' films, amongst them the aptly titled I Love You, Man (Hamburg 2009), Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Funny People (2009), and, most recently, Gordon's Horrible Bosses (2011) ); and that Todd Phillips' The Hangover (2009) in particular - with its doubly trangressional contrivance of a road trip and weekend in Vegas - marks the zenith of a genre compelled by a distinctly Bakhtinian 'grotesque body'. Moreover, this article suggests, Phillips' fragmented narrative and reappropriation of the DVD text's liminal spaces (primarily its closing credit sequence and 'extras') may have significant ramifications for readings of contemporary 'bromantic' relations.