Get Him To The Greek
Written and Directed By: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Elisabeth
Moss, Rose Byrne
Rated: R for strong sexual content and drug use throughout, and
pervasive language.
Comedy is a tricky thing. There are types of humor that will elicit
one of two responses in viewers, laughter or offense, and not much in
between. “Get Him To The Greek” is full of those kinds of humor. If
you find the same things funny that its writer/director does, you will
probably love it. If you don’t, it will be uncomfortable at best and
actively enraging at worst.
The plot is straightforward: Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) is a young
record company employee who loves music. He comes up with an idea to
help the company do better: have aging rock legend Aldous Snow
(Russell Brand) do a live performance to mark the tenth anniversary of
his landmark concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. The company
can sell all kinds of rights as well as his back catalog. His boss,
Sergio (Sean “P. Diddy” Combs) decides he likes the idea and assigns
Aaron to escort the star from his home in London to the concert. He
has 72 hours to get the fellow there. This should be plenty, but
Aldous has fallen spectacularly off the wagon after a bad breakup and
is in full drunken rock star mode. Young, naive Aaron doesn’t stand a
chance.
The film begins with a brilliant montage chronicling Aldous’ rise to
greatness and subsequent fall, using news clips, papparazzi photos,
and segments from his music videos, including his dreadful, maudlin
ballad against war, “African Child.” This is probably the film’s high
point — writer/director Nicholas Stoller has a poison pen and is
spot-on when it comes to skewering the music industry.
Unfortunately, the film soon devolves into jokes involving Aaron
getting thoroughly humiliated as he tries and fails to do his job.
That’s not my cup of tea, but some folks like it, so okay. Then,
however, the film has one of those “rape is funny if it happens to a
guy” scenes. This is the point where it went from cringe-inducing to
actively offensive and totally lost me. The inclusion of several
surprisingly serious scenes before the film’s ridiculous conclusion
didn’t help.
It’s a pity, really, because the things that are good in “Get Him to
the Greek” are really, really good. Brand can actually sing, and he
does a fantastic job of being a rock star on stage. He moves his lanky
body like he’s been in a major, stadium-concert band for years. Hill
is sympathetic and almost entirely likeable. Combs is hysterical and
has fantastic timing in his scenes (he reappears late in the film to
help Aaron and steals all his scenes easily).
Whether you should see “Get Him To The Greek” or not is entirely a
matter of personal taste. If the good points sound like they’ll
outweigh the bad, go for it. Otherwise, stay away.