Review: Get Him to the Greek

Okay, I'm just going to up and say it: I think Russell Brand is hot. There. Now you know. I liked him better than anyone else in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (although I have a bit of a Jason Segal crush too), and I felt embarrassed for him in that dreadful Bedtime Stories. I hoped Get Him to the Greek wouldn't suck, and that if nothing else, I could at least enjoy watching Brand as a rockstar for two hours. Happily, I not only enjoyed Brand on that guilty visual level, but I laughed my way through Get Him to the Greek. Writer/director Nicholas Stoller has brought us a film that feels shorter and funnier than his previous outing, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Get Him to the Greek reunites Stoller with Brand and Jonah Hill -- Brand plays rockstar Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but Hill's character, Aaron Green, is different. He's a junior staffer at a record label, and his boss is Sean Combs. Aaron is a huge Aldous Snow fan -- well, up until the point where the rocker released that awful "African Child" song and sank into a drug and alcohol-fueled decline -- and thinks it would be great to bring Aldous to LA for a big concert to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his best concert. His boss agrees ... and makes Aaron travel to London to pick up Aldous and make sure he gets to the concert venue (The Greek, natch) on time.

If this all sounds a little like an amped-up version of the 1982 comedy My Favorite Year -- you may have a point. While I adored Peter O'Toole, however, that film as a whole never quite grabbed me. But Get Him to the Greek takes the premise to raunchy extremes, giving Aaron a crazy, hazy, occasionally disturbing tour of an out-of-control rockstar's life.

I felt the film went a little too far in one scene that included nonconsensual sex. If Jonah Hill's character were female and the same thing happened, we'd all be outraged about rape humor. As it is, we're supposed to laugh and keep going. I did while watching the movie, but remembering it afterwards, realized that it marked a point in the film where I started to find some of the humor uncomfortable, particularly that scene. And before you all fuss and accuse me of humorless feminism, let me point out that my husband found that scene much more upsetting than I did.

One reason the movie does get away with it is not just that the victim is a guy, but that it is in fact a guy played by Jonah Hill. Hill is the straight man to Russell Brand's Aldous Snow (and you could make a number of jokes about the amount of anal play Hill's character suffers as the "straight man" but I'll refrain), and he is pitch-perfect as the almost grown-up guy who wants just a taste of the rockstar lifestyle until he's dunked in it head-first. Or maybe ass-first. His reactions to many of the predicaments Aldous lands him in are priceless.

The cameos in this movie are everywhere -- when a main character is a celebrity, it makes sense to surround him with other celebrities -- and there's something for everyone. I recognized Tom Felton, but my husband didn't; on the other hand, he howled at Paul Krugman, whom I had to look up when I got home. This probably says a lot about both of us. Lars Ulrich has one of the better cameos. Sean Combs has a full supporting role, and shows excellent flair for comedy -- I hope we see him in more films.

Get Him to the Greek has its uneven spots, and there's only one scene in which you truly get a sense of the love of music that the characters profess: Aldous's unexpected rendition of "The Clap," which he performs with great energy and pleasure. It may be the brightest moment in the film -- none of the music Aldous performs later has quite that spark. The "bad" songs are a lot of fun, topped by the brilliant "African Child" music video that opens the movie, but "The Clap" is right up there with the songs from This Is Spinal Tap. One of the best movies of the year? Well, no. One of the funniest? Quite possibly.

I interviewed Jonah Hill and Nicholas Stoller for Cinematical; you can read the long interview here, and if profanity doesn't bother you, read this shorter article where the two discuss male nudity in their films.