Let’s not mince words: "The Hangover Part II" was awful. Shamelessly abysmal. Words cannot really describe the soul-sucking sensation I felt sitting in a packed theater of fellow audience members, silently watching "Part II" and waiting for laughs that never came. When critics open up their thesaurus of angry words and rant about the soulless, unimaginative laziness of Hollywood, about how they view audiences simply as big, money-packed wallets with legs, "The Hangover Part II" is what they point to as proof.

So yeah, "The Hangover Part III" is better than "Part II," but we’re not exactly talking about a monumental achievement. There are a few more laughs this time around (a.k.a. more than one), but it’s still clear that what happened in Vegas four years ago shouldn’t have gone any further.

For this final installment, writer/director Todd Phillips (who makes a cameo during a late parachuting sequence) and fellow scribe Craig Mazin thankfully ditch the Mad Libs sheet that provided the story for the past two films and come up with a new adventure. There’s no bachelor party this time, and we’ve moved very far from the world of hangovers. Instead, the Wolfpack – smug, well-groomed leader Phil (Bradley Cooper); uptight dentist Stu (Ed Helms); and socially inept manchild Alan (Zach Galifianakis) – is off to Arizona, taking Alan to rehab after his dad (Jeffrey Tambor) dies and an incident involving a giraffe on the freeway. The latter part sounds funnier than it plays.

Along the way, however, an angry criminal named Marshall (John Goodman) runs them off the road. He tells them their old gangster pal Chow (Ken Jeong, slightly less screechy than usual) stole $21 million in gold bricks from him. Now, the guys must track down their old nemesis and bring him – and the bricks – back to Marshall. And to make sure they get the job done, Marshall kidnaps Doug. Poor Justin Bartha; he never gets to have any fun. Do Phillips and company mistake him for Sean Penn and think he’s physically incapable of humor?

The ensuing chase leads them to Tijuana and back to Vegas, where they run into friends both old (Heather Graham) and new, namely Melissa McCarthy who makes a brief appearance as a pawn shop owner that’s Alan’s equal in terms of social incompetence.

One thing they don’t run into? Jokes. For a movie aiming for riotous laughs and comedy, there are long stretches of time without anything resembling a punchline or joke. "The Hangover Part III" might even be better described as a dark action thriller with an occasional spattering of joke attempts in between set piece moments. Gone are the fun, goofy antics of the first film. Now the Wolfpack’s story has a hefty body count, and even many of the attempts at humor are pitch black and mean-spirited (one sequence is based around killing chickens). Phillips’s often grimy, dark direction doesn’t exactly help create a tone of light summer entertainment.

Every now and then, a joke lands, like Alan reuniting with baby Carlos from the original "Hangover" and Chow finding out he’s colorblind at the wrong time. The movie even manages to recapture a bit of the lively adventure from the first film when the crew heads back to Caesar’s Palace.

But these moments of fun are exactly that: moments, spaced way too far out and with too much unpleasant filler in the middle.

There’s a part in "High Fidelity" (one of my favorite movies if anybody’s asking) when John Cusack’s character reconnects with a beloved old flame played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, only to discover she’s loud, rude and selfish. He begins to wonder if she was always like that, and his memory simply edited out the bad parts.

During a montage at the end of "Part III," looking back at all of the great times we’ve had over the past three movies (they should’ve left out "Part II" if that was the goal), I found myself asking the same questions. Was "The Hangover" like this too, and I just mentally edited it into something better? Was it always this lacking in jokes? Did Phil always seem this mean?

From the looks of it, the cast – what I remember once made "The Hangover" so relatable under all of the ridiculous hijinks – is having similar thoughts. Helms and especially Cooper look bored. Galifianakis still puts in an effort, but it’s hard to hide the fact that the act is as tired as the catchphrases he keeps spouting ("chillax," "you got schooled").

They’re all ready to move onto other, hopefully better things. It’s too bad it took two lifeless sequels to get to that realization.