There are a few surefire markers that the movie you're watching is not going to realize its full potential.

For instance, the presence of a monkey. We all like monkeys, but they have never made a movie better. If the godfather in The Godfather were instead played by an orangutan in a suit, we would probably still have an amazing movie on our hands, but one of entirely different quality.

Monkeys are put in movies when the people making movies run out of ideas for how to entertain an audience in valid, non-monkey ways. They're a sort of shorthand, the same way glasses are shorthand that a character is nerdy. So on some level, all I really need to say for you to know everything there is to know about The Hangover Part II is there is a monkey in it.

-- Local show times, theaters, trailer.

With Ed Helms about to get married, he invites the old gang of Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis to Thailand for the ceremony. After a single beer down on the beach, they wake the next day disheveled in Bangkok with no memory of how they got there.

And somewhere in the night, they lost Mason Lee, the teenage brother of Helms' wife-to-be. With the wedding looming, they'll have to reconstruct the night and track Lee down before Helms' in-laws find out -- or before the city takes Lee for good.

If The Hangover Part II were any more mercenary, then it would get blasted out of a high-rise by Bruce Willis. The only way it could be more like the first is if it were actually the first. Same concept. Same core characters. Ken Jeong is back, as is his nudity. Justin Bartha, the guy who got lost in the original, tags along as well, though he's once again relegated to the sideliniest of sidelines. The boys practically spend more time reminding each other of what happened last time than in doing new things this time.

Which probably sounds like a big whiny complaint. The Hangover movies are comedies, and as comedies, it's not about savoring the cinematography or the symbolism of that guy's badly shaved head or that other guy's tiny, tiny wang.

For a comedy, the only relevant question is "Is it funny?"

The answer: kinda.

I thought The Hangover part one was fairly funny, but not hilariously, riotously, "laugh so hard you shower the audience with your laugh-exploded body" funny, so if you disagree, there's a good chance you'll like Part II more than me as well.

But this chance is not ironclad. It is not even stiff-leather-jacket-clad. No, this chance is wearing pajamas, and slippers that may look sturdy, but will probably prove impractical if the chance is forced to run.

Part II has a different team of writers from the first. Guys with a lot of credits for stuff that ranges from decent (Old School) to criminal (the Scary Movie franchise, which actually makes a lot of sense, given that Part II is practically a parody of the first one). They bring buckets of gross-out gags to Part II, but not much in the way of wit or funny dialogue. The whole thing's pretty tame until the out-of-control shenanigans begin.

Once those kick in -- and this takes a while -- it gets OK. The cast is still great, even when they're tasked with propping up saggy comedic concepts such as monkeys, naked ladyboys and frown-worthy racial humor. I laughed on several occasions, enough to be having a good time.

But not a sequel-worthy good time. Part II is just funny enough to be watchable if you can pretend it's something new, but given how often the screenwriters themselves remind us of funnier parts from the first movie, it's impossible not to think you might be better off just renting that instead.

Grade: C+

* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com. His fiction is available on Kindle, Nook, and through Smashwords.