Hangover II Writer To Direct Too-Familiar Road Comedy Search Party

Now that The Hangover III trailer has been released, proving that series is perfectly find with going from good too bad to a farce of itself, it’s time for another like-minded comedy to come out and raunchily saunter its way up to $100 million at the box office. There isn’t much surprise that the comedic seeds of one should sprout into the other.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Hangover II co-screenwriter Scot Armstrong is set to make his directorial debut with Search Party, formerly called Road to Nardo, a misadventure-filled comedy picked up by Universal from Gold Circle, responsible for last year’s surprise musical hit Pitch Perfect. Armstrong also co-wrote this script, with help from newcomer Mike Gagerman and Andrew Waller, who directed the direct-to-DVD American Pie Presents Beta House, and yes that last part was said with disdain. Luckily, Armstrong has a longer resume of mostly mediocre comedies behind him, having written Semi-Pro, Old School, The Heartbreak Kid and Starsky & Hutch, to name a few.

See if this plotline sounds familiar to you. Two friends, Evan and Jason, are trying to reconnect their buddy Nardo with the fiancé that they scared away from the altar. Nardo gets carjacked and is abandoned in Mexico with no money or clothes, and then the friends come by and their real adventures start or something. It’s usually a problem when a film’s synopsis refers only to events that happen before the film is supposed to take place.

We’ll have to wait until late 2014 for Universal’s planned release to show us exactly how funny this watered-down plot will be. And you know what they say about water in Mexico…