(L-R) Zach Galifianakis as Alan, Bradley Cooper as Phil, Justin Bartha as Doug and Ed Helms as Stu in "The Hangpver Part II."

Bradley Cooper is proof that if you persevere long enough in this business, you end up working with the same monkeys all over again -- and no, we don't mean Zach Galifianakis.

"Crystal was incredible," Cooper says of the monkey who plays a Bangkok drug-mule who's key to the plot of The Hangover Part II, in theatres Thursday.

"I'd actually worked with her on Failure to Launch about six years ago."

The monkey talk makes Cooper laugh. "What's it say that I'm doing movies with monkeys I've worked with before? Is it my age?"

It may be that you're just remembering he was even in the Matthew McConaughey/Sarah Jessica Parker rom-com Failure to Launch, just as you'd have to have fairly vivid memories of Sex and the City and Alias to recall him clearly. If you saw Wedding Crashers, you saw a TV good guy show earn a reputation for being able to convincingly play a jerk.

But it was the lightning-in-a-bottle adult comedy The Hangover that put Bradley Cooper on the cover of magazines, most notably People, which put him on the shortlist of Sexiest Men Alive.

The tale of three blackout victims on a bachelor's weekend in Vegas -- whose search for a missing groom involves a tiger, a baby, property damage, a hooker marriage and gangsters -- hit some kind of nerve with the public in 2009, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated comedy in history (surpassing Beverly Hills Cop).

To be honest, I didn't feel the prospect of a Hangover sequel -- as inevitable as it was -- boded well.

"And I felt exactly the same way," replies Cooper, fresh off his scene-heavy box-office triumph opposite Robert DeNiro in Limitless. "Although I was less trepidatious when we got around to shooting it. And it's nice when you finally see it and you realize your hunches were correct.

"I think it's a lot better than the first movie, in fact. What was great about the first movie was it was new and you'd never be able to repeat that surprise. So we went the opposite route of adhering to the structure of the first one, where, in the opening scene, I'm on the phone saying, 'Tracy, it's Phil. We f----- up again."

In fact, The Hangover Part II's approach is to take that template and be even more transgressive, with graphic sexuality (with transsexuals), rather more dire physical wounds and property damage.

"We're saying it's the same structure, but it's different. It's darker, the stakes are higher and we're going to go to places we didn't in the first one.

"Put it this way," he says with a laugh. "About once a month I get someone who has to tell me how much The Hangover reminded him of his crazy weekend.

"I doubt they'll do that with this movie. It'll be more like 'Holy s---, I'm never going to Bangkok or even that part of the world!' "

The experience, he says with jovial hyperbole, was like "going to war." The plot has Phil, Alan (Galifianakis) and Doug (Justin Bartha, whose character always seems to vanish in these movies) heading to Thailand for the marriage of Stu (Ed Helms). With them is Teddy (Mason Lee), the pre-med prodigy who's the bride-to-be's kid brother. Despite best intentions, there comes a morning where they wake up confused and not-all-there. Their investigations are greeted with the all-purpose shrug, "Bangkok has 'em now, and it'll never let 'em go."

"I mean, I honestly love Zach and Ed," Cooper says. "I know Zach more because Ed works on The Office so goddamn much that we haven't spent as much time together. Zach is one of my best buddies. And I love (director/writer) Todd Phillips. There's an easy feel around Todd and Zach that's intoxicating."

We get to talking about aspects of Bangkok, from its fleshpots (districts where The Hangover Part II shot, such as Patpong, Soi Cowboy and the "lady-boy" bars of Nana) to its food and people.

"After 10 weeks in this place, you start to feel it's the land of a thousand smiles, and there's something about it that's pure and makes you forget how lurid and morose it can be."

Not that their schedule left them any tourist time. "It was just like shooting in Vegas in that regard. All the craziness is on the film."

In one regard, Cooper says he found The Hangover sequel easier. Phil, the cucumber-cool schoolteacher, who isn't above morally dubious routes to solve their dilemma fit Cooper better.

"I would say no one is like their roles. Ed is the most like Stu, and even they're different.

"I'm nothing like Phil. I would never purport to be as cool as he is. The way he walks and the way he talks and the swagger. it's just the way he is.

"He's an innately cool guy. There's nothing malicious about him. He's, like, 'Why WOULDN'T you leave a baby in a cop car?'

"The first movie was harder, because I had a lot of fear that I wouldn't be able to do it. It took a lot of coaxing from Todd to get the confidence to do it. This movie felt effortless. Todd just sort of let me go and Phil was there fully."

It seems as if everything is going Cooper's way these days. He'll be in Montreal in June starring opposite Jeremy Irons in The Words, a plagiarism drama written and directed by Cooper's friend Brian Klugman (Tron Legacy).

And by the end of the year, he's set to star as Lucifer in a fairly faithful, action-packed version of Milton's Paradise Lost, directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City).

"I cannot wait to play that. It is really Paradise Lost, the story of creation based on Milton's poem. That's why the idea of Lucifer is so great.

To me, when I read the poem in college (the Pittsburgh native attended Villanova and Georgetown), I was blown away at how compelling an argument Lucifer makes for his point of view."

And, yet, the world is not always his oyster.

"I've still got to fight for roles. I fought for Lucifer, and I fought for a role the other day I didn't get. I wanted to play Tom Buchanan in (Baz Luhrmann's) The Great Gatsby.

"You can't get them all," he says with a shrug.

SIDEBAR

Just call this "The Liberation of Bradley Cooper, An Act in Four Parts."

When he played good-guy journalist-turned-CIA-researcher Will Tippin in Alias, Bradley Cooper was turned down repeatedly for other roles because he had "no edge."

Then he played the "douchebag" Sack Lodge in Wedding Crashers, a role he says he based on some of the people he liked least in high school back in Pittsburgh. All of a sudden, he was stereotyped as "a jerk" onscreen.

I suggest to him that each new persona liberates him from the last.

"That's a good way to put it, kind of changing the game," he says. "Let's see ...

"Alias liberated me from not being able to make a living.

"Then Wedding Crashers liberated me from Alias.

"The Hangover liberated me from my Wedding Crashers character.

"And then Limitless liberated me from playing an ensemble character the rest of my life."

 

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