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Just last night I was expressing surprise and enthusiasm at The Hangover‘s longevity on the box office charts. Even with blockbusters like Transformers 2 and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince destroying audience wallets, the comedy from Todd Phillips featuring three hapless idiots who lose their friend on a Vegas bachelor, bad-idea-fest has hung in the top five with incredible tenacity.

It’s also been chasing down Beverly Hills Cop to become the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

As of Sunday, it’s achieved that feat according to a sweetly-worded press release that was hand-delivered to me this morning by an intern at the Warners offices.

On it’s own, this is obviously a huge achievement, but it’s also exciting because I think it opens up the doors for Todd Phillips a bit more. As a fan of Phillips, I think it would be interesting to see what he could do with even more freedom. On the other hand, the guy usually gets a production budget number from the studio and shoots whatever he wants as long as it comes in below that number. The guy is a master of not needing big-named stars to make his movies work. In fact, when he does have better-known actors, the movies are…less than awesome. Otherwise, he’s busy launching careers for Will Ferrell and others.

What do you think?