Top Five Movies about People Visiting Las Vegas and Doing “Crazy” Things

by Ernie on 08/02/10 at 9:30 am

5. What Happens in Vegas (2008): dumped workaholic and fired slacker end up married after night of debauchery, and also win 3 million dollars at the slots. Judge sentences them to live together for 6 months, with whoever asks to be let out of the marriage automatically forfeiting the money to the other. Naturally, both try to make life hell for the other, which causes them to fall in love with each other.

4. Honeymoon in Vegas (1992): committmentphobe Nick Cage goes to Vegas to marry his long-suffering fiance, Sarah Jessica Parker. Meanwhile, mob-connected James Caan falls in love at first sight with Parker because she’s a dead ringer for his late wife. Caan arranges that Cage lose a poker round to him, resulting in Caan winning from Cage a weekend with Parker, during which time he attempts to have her fall in love with him and marry him. Cage, meanwhile, desperately tries to get Parker back, even becoming a “Flying Elvis” to do so, while Parker finds herself becoming a feather-bedecked showgirl.

3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998): You either get this or you don’t. Same with the book. Depp was a drinking buddy of Hunter’s, as was Del Toro.

2. Viva Las Vegas (1964): Elvis! Ann Margret! Cars! Singing! Dancing! Dirty tricks!

1. The Hangover (2009) Something something tiger, baby, Mike Tyson, dentist, bitchy girlfriend, hot prostitute, stolen police car, Ecstacy, late for wedding, live chicken, desert, trunk fu, mid-highway tuxedo transfer, Mercedes, mattress, sunburn, something, drunken marriage . . . .

Extra: An episode of the TV show Stargate: Atlantis, in which an alien vampire makeup expert moves to Vegas and becomes a card shark who steals money from Sopranos actors while he builds some kind of nuclear device so he can send a message to another galaxy, all wrapped up in an alternate universe.