The Hangover star Ed Helms has recently spoken about how his mother cried watching the film for the first time. Along with Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis, Helms helped make this Todd Phillips classic one of the most popular comedies of the 2000s, as his characterization of the dentist Stu was an essential part of the movie’s wild dynamic.

Telling the story of a bachelor party gone wrong, The Hangover was a raunchy glimpse into the most outrageous side of human debauchery as a group of friends wake up to a missing groom with no memory of the night before. Given Helms’ conservative upbringing, he was understandably nervous about how his family would react. See Helms’ full comments below.

“I grew up in a kind of a repressed Southern home. Politically, very progressive, but still a very socially conservative kind of environment.

And so ‘The Hangover’ is nuts. That’s not what they raised me to do, to be in a movie like ‘The Hangover.’ So my parents — at that point they’d seen me do crazy stuff on ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Office’ — and so there was some sort of acceptance already, but, still, I was nervous for my parents to see ‘The Hangover…

“I was like 35 when that movie came out, and I’m still nervous about my parents… I’m looking at my mom, the lights come up, and she’s crying. Tears streaming down her face, and, for a second, I’m like, ‘Did I just break my poor mom’s heart?’ She says to me that ‘That was so funny,’ and just [gave me] a big hug. I’ll just never forget that was such a special moment.”

Ed Helms Was Nervous About How His Family Would React To The Hangover

The Hangover Made Ed Helms’ Mother Cry

In an interview with Ted Danson on SiriusXM’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, Helms peeled back the curtain on his family’s reaction to The Hangover. While Helms was already known for his correspondent role on The Daily Show and as Andy Bernard on The Office, The Hangover signaled his biggest success in the film industry up to that point.

With plenty of explicit content, Helms felt the wild partying, crude jokes, and morally questionable behavior in The Hangover clashed with his family’s conservative values. Helms’ character may have seemed relatively mild at first, yet Stu ended up embracing chaos as he lost a tooth and married a stripper as he went off the rails in Las Vegas.

However, the results were different from what Helms expected, as not only did his family support his comedy career, they actually encouraged it and complimented his work on The Hangover. When Helms saw tears streaming down his mother’s face, he thought he had broken her, but they were tears of laughter as she told him she found the movie hilarious.

Our Take On The Hangover’s Legacy Today

The Sequels Felt Unnecessary

The Hangover was one of the most acclaimed comedies of the 2000s, and it’s no surprise that even more conservative viewers like Helms’ mother were able to see the funny side of this wild night of excess. With great performances, a sharp script, and a unique premise, it was clear from the beginning that the film would be a comedy classic.

While The Hangover remains endlessly rewatchable to this day, the two unnecessary sequels that followed harmed its legacy. The follow-ups had funny moments, but it felt like the joke had run its course, and it’s hard not to feel like The Hangover would be even more revered today if it were allowed to remain just one single great film.

Source: Where Everybody Knows Your Name