Director: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elisabeth Moss, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Rose Byrne, Colm Meany
Running Time: 109 minutes (plus trailers)
“This is rock n' roll. Did you enjoy the party?”
If comedy were a house party, the new film written and directed by Nicholas Stoller would be the crazy drunk guy running around with a lampshade on his head. Loud, obnoxious and completely off his face, this guy stumbles from place to place, sometimes hilarious, sometimes cringe worthy, before finally collapsing in a pool of what you hope is only his own vomit. Jonah Hill stars as Aaron Green, a junior record company executive given the near impossible task of getting washed up rock-star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from London to Los Angeles in time for an anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre. The resulting three day journey quickly turns into an odyssey of sex, drugs, rock n rock, alcohol, drugs, anal penetration, sex, celebrity cameos, drugs, litres of bodily fluids, several near death experiences, and drugs. If last years break out comedy hit The Hangover showed us what happens the morning after a wild night on the town, then Get Him to the Greek provides us with the missing hours we’d rather forget.
This is not the first film to feature narcissistic rocker Aldous Snow – English comedian Russell Brand reprises the role from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also directed Stoller, written by and starring Jason Segel of How I Met Your Mother fame. I honestly think that Segel is one of the funniest people currently working in the entertainment industry, and his lack of involvement in Get Him to the Greek is obvious. This film comes nowhere near the comedic brilliance of its predecessor, easily the best film of the Judd Apatow produced stable, and perhaps one of the best comedies of the last twenty years. Never the less, Get Him to the Greek is funny, thanks mostly to the performances of its two leads, and more importantly, their willingness to abandon all dignity for the sake of a good laugh.
In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Aldous Snow was proudly celebrating his sobriety; in this film he is well and truly off the wagon and determined to drag the normally sensible Aaron down with him. This is your pretty standard comic/straight man double act, and most of movies' big laughs come from watching one or both of them blitzed past the point of no return on several different substances of varying strength and legality. And make no mistake, there are some big laughs in this film; the sheer, unadulterated, debauched craziness of some of the scenarios in this movie are so ridiculous and manic that I almost had tears in my eyes – the film also raises the bar for one of the most uncomfortably realistic sex scenes in a comedy, coming albeit after several more preposterous ones earlier on.
But in-between the more ridiculous set-pieces, this is at its heart another improvisational comedy in the same vein as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and the aforementioned Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The way these movies work is you take a bunch of funny guys – included but to limited to Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and even Jonah Hill, who has himself appeared in several of these films (including Sarah Marshall, in a totally different role) – and let them bounce off each other and try and make the audience laugh. Sadly, of all the films from that stable, this is first one that felt as though it was very deliberately trying to make me laugh; the improvisation often feels forced rather than flowing freely, the comic timing sometimes just a little off.
Additionally, as a satire of the music industry and, in a broader sense, celebrity culture, the film is only okay. Some of the cameos did get a chuckle and the creative criticism of Snow’s failed charity single “African Child” makes me wish I got the chance to write that scathingly more often (my personal favourite was a review that called the song “the worst thing to happen to Africa since apartheid”). Unfortunately, like the improv, some of the jokes works, but just as many falls flat: P. Diddy’s role as Aaron’s boss had some people in my theatre laughing hysterically, but personally I thought he was just a much less funny version of Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (who by the way is receiving his very own spin-off movie.)
But before I shout down that project, I guess it’s important to remember that Get Him to the Greek is itself a spin-off starring a relatively minor character from another film, and while it fails to live up to the original, it’s still funny enough to warrant a look, at the very least on DVD. In fact, given the inordinate amount of jokes in the trailer that weren’t in the film itself, the cut scenes in the DVD may very well be better than the movie as a whole. That is so often the curse of film like this; the people involved are much funnier than the final product, and what you end up with is the feeling that it would’ve been much more fun to be on the set than in the theatre. But even as a lesser, rather inconsistant entry into this raunchy new breed style of comedy, Get Him to the Greek is still funny and gross enough to justify being spun-off in the first place.
Get Him To The Greek is in cinemas now
Starring: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elisabeth Moss, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Rose Byrne, Colm Meany
Running Time: 109 minutes (plus trailers)
“This is rock n' roll. Did you enjoy the party?”
If comedy were a house party, the new film written and directed by Nicholas Stoller would be the crazy drunk guy running around with a lampshade on his head. Loud, obnoxious and completely off his face, this guy stumbles from place to place, sometimes hilarious, sometimes cringe worthy, before finally collapsing in a pool of what you hope is only his own vomit. Jonah Hill stars as Aaron Green, a junior record company executive given the near impossible task of getting washed up rock-star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from London to Los Angeles in time for an anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre. The resulting three day journey quickly turns into an odyssey of sex, drugs, rock n rock, alcohol, drugs, anal penetration, sex, celebrity cameos, drugs, litres of bodily fluids, several near death experiences, and drugs. If last years break out comedy hit The Hangover showed us what happens the morning after a wild night on the town, then Get Him to the Greek provides us with the missing hours we’d rather forget.
This is not the first film to feature narcissistic rocker Aldous Snow – English comedian Russell Brand reprises the role from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, also directed Stoller, written by and starring Jason Segel of How I Met Your Mother fame. I honestly think that Segel is one of the funniest people currently working in the entertainment industry, and his lack of involvement in Get Him to the Greek is obvious. This film comes nowhere near the comedic brilliance of its predecessor, easily the best film of the Judd Apatow produced stable, and perhaps one of the best comedies of the last twenty years. Never the less, Get Him to the Greek is funny, thanks mostly to the performances of its two leads, and more importantly, their willingness to abandon all dignity for the sake of a good laugh.In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Aldous Snow was proudly celebrating his sobriety; in this film he is well and truly off the wagon and determined to drag the normally sensible Aaron down with him. This is your pretty standard comic/straight man double act, and most of movies' big laughs come from watching one or both of them blitzed past the point of no return on several different substances of varying strength and legality. And make no mistake, there are some big laughs in this film; the sheer, unadulterated, debauched craziness of some of the scenarios in this movie are so ridiculous and manic that I almost had tears in my eyes – the film also raises the bar for one of the most uncomfortably realistic sex scenes in a comedy, coming albeit after several more preposterous ones earlier on.
But in-between the more ridiculous set-pieces, this is at its heart another improvisational comedy in the same vein as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and the aforementioned Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The way these movies work is you take a bunch of funny guys – included but to limited to Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and even Jonah Hill, who has himself appeared in several of these films (including Sarah Marshall, in a totally different role) – and let them bounce off each other and try and make the audience laugh. Sadly, of all the films from that stable, this is first one that felt as though it was very deliberately trying to make me laugh; the improvisation often feels forced rather than flowing freely, the comic timing sometimes just a little off.Additionally, as a satire of the music industry and, in a broader sense, celebrity culture, the film is only okay. Some of the cameos did get a chuckle and the creative criticism of Snow’s failed charity single “African Child” makes me wish I got the chance to write that scathingly more often (my personal favourite was a review that called the song “the worst thing to happen to Africa since apartheid”). Unfortunately, like the improv, some of the jokes works, but just as many falls flat: P. Diddy’s role as Aaron’s boss had some people in my theatre laughing hysterically, but personally I thought he was just a much less funny version of Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (who by the way is receiving his very own spin-off movie.)
But before I shout down that project, I guess it’s important to remember that Get Him to the Greek is itself a spin-off starring a relatively minor character from another film, and while it fails to live up to the original, it’s still funny enough to warrant a look, at the very least on DVD. In fact, given the inordinate amount of jokes in the trailer that weren’t in the film itself, the cut scenes in the DVD may very well be better than the movie as a whole. That is so often the curse of film like this; the people involved are much funnier than the final product, and what you end up with is the feeling that it would’ve been much more fun to be on the set than in the theatre. But even as a lesser, rather inconsistant entry into this raunchy new breed style of comedy, Get Him to the Greek is still funny and gross enough to justify being spun-off in the first place.
Get Him To The Greek is in cinemas now
