Zach Galifianakis as Alan, Bradley Cooper as Phil and Ed Helms as Stu in “The Hangover Part II.” (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures) Two years ago, a movie about four best friends took the summer movie season by storm. Todd Phillips’ film did exceedingly well at the box office and it got better-than-expected reviews from critics, including Desson Thomson in his review for The Washington Post.

But the difference between that and reviews for “The Hangover II” is as bracing as, say, finding a live tiger in your bathroom: Ann Hornaday gave the sequel just one star.

Could we have predicted this? Probably, given how closely the sequel’s trailer adheres to key plot points from the original. Let’s take a look at the reviews for each film:

The Hangover:

You can spot them at weddings right away. The ones choking to death in their suits. Eyes pinging around the room. Waiting for the nightmare to end.

You know: guys.

Well, finally, someone has felt their pain and made “The Hangover,” a comedy that belches mightily -- and amusingly -- in the direction of all those rom-coms that seem underwritten by bridal magazines.

The Hangover Part II:

Summer wouldn’t be fittingly launched without a go-for-broke raunchy comedy, the kind of uncensored, emotionally expansive movie where pleasure can be found not just in the taboos it gleefully smashes but in its celebration of friendship, emotional growth and sundry humanist values.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have that movie: It’s called “Bridesmaids” and it’s playing at your local multiplex.

Burn.Okay, so the guys are in Bangkok this time around. There has to be plenty of room for new misadventures in a city that might even out-sin Sin City, right?

The Hangover:

But almost as soon as they embark into that good night, all becomes oblivion. They don’t remember a thing. Who was the stripper leaving their hotel room early in the morning? How did that live tiger end up in their bathroom? And what the heck happened to their missing friend Doug?

The Hangover Part II:

Once the posse lands in Thailand, “just one beer” two nights before the wedding turns into a similar bender, with the three principals awaking in a Bangkok hotel room with a severed finger, a monkey in a Rolling Stones vest and no memory of how they got there. And they’ve managed to lose Stu’s future brother-in-law, launching a search of the city’s bars, strip clubs and tattoo parlors where they’ve left a trail of havoc in their wake.

So we’ve replaced a tiger with a monkey and a missing tooth with a severed digit. But what about the rest of the script? The review of the original made it clear that Phillips had written something more than just a rote buddy romp:

The Hangover:

Sitting through “The Hangover” is like watching “Memento” featuring the Three Stooges.

The Hangover Part II:

Director Todd Phillips, working from a script he wrote with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, follows the first movie beat-for-beat, switching a character and location here and there but never straying far from the original template.

So what you’re telling me is that I should save my money and go see “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” instead?

Other than a cigarette-smoking monkey instead of a sunglasses-wearing baby, a lurid face tattoo instead of a missing tooth and a locale that exchanges Vegas’s ersatz sheen for a decidedly dingier, dank aesthetic, ”The Hangover Part II” offers absolutely nothing new to fans of the first film.

Noted. If you’re like me, though, you’re still going to queue up like a sucker for “The Hangover Part II,” maybe even as early as tonight, with midnight showings scattered across the area. Or will you let a bad review dissuade you?