Review: GET HIM TO THE GREEK is absurdly hilarious
Like Forgetting Sarah Marshall before it, the movie is overly crude but high on laughs...
rating: 3.5
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Like Forgetting Sarah Marshall before it, director Nicholas Stoller's follow-up Get Him To The Greek is a hilarious, smart and surprisingly sweet, but continuously crude comedy that never gets boring, and knows exactly what it's doing with it's simple premise. Which is; general do-gooder, ambitious but very much a loser music exec Adam Green (Jonah Hill) has three days to escort a debauched Brit rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from London to the Greek Theatre in the States for a 10 year anniversary concert, amidst the distractions of Snow's train-wreck demons & vices (booze, drugs, women, etc). In other words, it's a kind of a 21st century version of Peter O'Toole's My Favourite Year. It's also, quietly and a little subtly, a celebration of the dying breed of snake-hipped, intoxicated, sex-crazed, insanely popular but they barley give a f*** British rockers like Mick Jagger. When you think about it, there isn't really a comparable Brit rock-star in 2010, and the movie does take this idea head-on and as I say, kudos for that. The nostalgia of the idea won me over, well done. Not that's it's over-bearing but I got it. Get Him To The Greek snuggly fits into my comedy pass grade formula, which is - if this kind of raucous comedy makes me register on a high audio frequency level from involuntary snorting through my mouth with laughter no less than three times, and keeps me chuckling at regular intervals, whilst cheshire cat grinning and thinking to myself ('yup this is fun') and never makes me look at my watch once, I will recommend it. That's not to say it isn't a slightly irritating movie, because it is (it has Russel Brand in it after all) but it's 80% funny and fails the other 20% through it's unbelievable dialogue, regular slapstick and low-rent humour and some wacky characterisation/story-telling flaws and well, Jonah Hill's constant spewing. Yes, that might sound like I'm being a pit picky but my God - I don't think I've seen more vomit in one movie. It also loses a few notches for the uninteresting sub-plot of Adam Green's girlfriend trouble (played by Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss) which leads to a highly uncomfortable scene that Chasing Amy wisely never ventured into and the repetitive nature of the second act scenes. Seriously... you will never see a movie with as many flight departures and arrivals and good luck in trying to keep up with the chronology of it all.
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I would also say outside of Hill (who is the funniest he has ever been here with his dry tone, and reminds us why he should land more lead roles over supporting ones) the performances aren't as sharp as in the previous rom-com, and the underlining male bonding message isn't as emotionally captivating as poor Jason Segal trying to forget Sarah Marshall (who briefly reprises her role, in an intro to her new t.v. show "Blind Medicine" as a doctor who has lost her sight, by golly) but it works. Mostly. It keeps it's sense of direction better than Hot Tub Time Machine, and trumps that movie to rightfully take the crown of being this year's The Hangover. There's also real effort in the staging, and there's at least four or five comedy spoof songs about sex for Aldous, which although again, a small thing - it's a neat touch. Although, if you can't switch off your brain to believe that this music lover, who adores Aldous Snow and calls him the savior of rock-and-roll, doesn't see how ridiculously asinine his songs are (he has a song celebrating that he has 'The Clap', and one called 'Bangers, Beans and Mash') then, you might find problems with this movie. There's also something in it that I wasn't at all expecting from this movie annd that's the discovery that P. Diddy can not only act, but he is one funny motherf***ker. Who would have thought it? He steals the best gags, the best lines. And there's a full two choruses play of Dexy Midnight Runner's 1982 classic "Come on Eileen". Surely a first for cinema.