Movie Review: Get Him to the Greek

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Screenplay: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Elisabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Colm Meaney
Rated: R

This weekend has seen the first raunchy comedy of the summer from director Nick Stoller and producer Judd Apatow. Get Him to the Greek starts Russell Brand and Jonah Hill in a movie largely compared to The Hangover, but more like the night beforehand.

Think back to a time (maybe college, hopefully college, all right — let’s just say it was college) when you were blitzed out of your mind, drinking whatever you were handed, and trying to recall bits of a song that was in your head five minutes ago. This is essentially what Get Him to the Greek is like, as Hill’s record company minion Aaron Green tries to get rockstar/trainwreck Aldous Snow (of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) to a 10th anniversary gig at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

The film starts off with some news about Snow’s latest actions, starting with a horribly performing single “African Child” (billed as “the worst thing to happen to Africa since famine and civil war”) and ending with Snow falling completely off the wagon. Hill’s Aaron Green, meanwhile, is a big fan of Snow’s who is at a crappy point in his relationship when his live-in girlfriend Daphne (Elisabeth Moss) who wants him to drop everything and move to Seattle with her just as his career is taking off. Green is then sent by his record executive boss Sergio (played hilariously by Sean “P. Diddy” Combs) to pick up Snow because the record label needs a “game changer,” and Sergio believes this concert is it.

So, the bad news first: the writing and editing for this film are somewhat lacking, moving too fast at times, though it makes sense if you think of the movie as a three-day-long party from the moment Hill touches down in London to Brand’s performance at the end. The film is also packed full of celebrity cameos from Pink to Harry Potter‘s Tom Felton, which feels a little much sometimes. It’s almost like they drove a truck down Beverly Hills and asked who wanted to be in this film. The movie sometimes tries to take itself seriously by exploring the complex nature of its characters, but barely even scratches the surface of what is really bothering Green and Snow, and never quite deals with it either.

Now, the good news: there really wasn’t a moment in two hours I wasn’t laughing at something. While Hill and Brand don’t really play well off of each other despite obvious comic differences in their characters, the result you get is like your crazy friend convincing you to do one more shot, then persuading you to ride a bike down a slide into the hotel swimming pool. Combs steals the scene just about every time he appears with an over-the-top caricature of himself, and really reminds me of Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder. One of the best scenes in the film involves him, Brand, Hill, and Colm Meaney (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Con Air) as Brand’s father in a party that gets just a little too out of control.

Music in the film is pretty good, mostly full of ’70s punk icons like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones. Of course, we also get several songs from Snow’s own band Infant Sorrow and Snow’s ex-girlfriend Jackie Q. that are laced with sphincter-wincing subtext (though with titles like “The Clap” and “Pound Me in the Buttocks,” it’s not-so-subtle) that heavily spoofs the sex-charged nature of the music industry.

In the end, this is on the weaker end of the spectrum from other Apatow-produced films. It probably would have been better if Jason Segel had actually been brought in to co-write instead of simply being listed for the characters he created. Regardless, if you want to see something that will make you laugh continuously over its sheer wrongness, this is definitely a movie for you.

Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars