GET HIM TO THE GREEK (B+)
My anticipation to see Get Him to the Greek started the first time I saw the preview for the movie. This film has close association with one of my all-time favorite comedies, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Both films boast the same director, Nicholas Stoller, and the characters created by Jason Segel played by Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. This 2010 comedy was also written by Stoller. He penned the scripts for the comedy gems Fun With Dick and Jane, Yes Man, and also wrote the upcoming Gulliver's Travels, a movie I just wrote about.
Brand reprises his role as the partying rock star Aldous Snow, but this time his career is in a funk after releasing an absolute musical flop called African Child. Hill's character Aaron Green works under P. Diddy at a record company looking for new ideas to make some money in the stagnant economy. Aaron wins the approval of his boss when he suggests having a ten year anniversary concert for Snow.
After the rocker agrees to the concert, Diddy sends Aaron to Europe to pick up Snow. The movie gains steam significantly from there as Aaron is the typical "fish out of water" in the party scene trying to keep Snow under control and on schedule to headline his concert in Los Angeles. Aaron's attempts are foiled as the strong will of the rocker to continue partying overrides his soft spoken personality.
The movie itself is full of hilarious comedy. Some moments were very subtle, and those seemed to make me laugh the hardest. There were more blatant attempts at laughs which seemed a little forced and were not hysterical like the filmmakers were shooting for. By forced, I mostly mean P. Diddy's character Sergio. Personally, I liked his character at times and really did not at others. His role was minor at the beginning, but then Sergio seemed to wedge himself into the latter parts of the movie attempting to deliver Ari Gold-like one liners for laughter. Problem is, the writing isn't as good, and the delivery by Diddy is not even in the same universe of the great Jeremy Piven. So less of Diddy in my opinion, equals more.
The leads by Hill and Brand were pulled off wonderfully. The execution of these roles is what made Get Him to the Greek more than just funny, but a good movie. I definitely cared more about Hill's character Aaron than Aldous Snow, which I think the writers were going for. Throughout the duration of the movie I was made to believe that I shouldn't have any emotional attachment to Aldous Snow because his character was just a personification of a rock star who lives to party. Then the movie tried to push an emotional side to the character, which I felt missed. The laughs don't always have to be rolling, but I just didn't connect with the serious side of Aldous Snow.
Overall, Get Him to the Greek is another success for Nicholas Stoller. While not as great as some of his past projects, the film definitely was a very good comedy. It had the essentials to be good but lacked the traits to be truly great and stand up with some of the better comedies in recent years.
Get Him to the Greek is funny enough to make you laugh, and well written enough to make you care. This past weekend audiences could choose between this good comedy, or the creepy thriller Barrett enjoyed, Splice. Whichever is your cup of tea, both movies received the thumbs up for a pricey theater ticket from the Movie Mash staff. Get out and see these movies, the summer movie season is in full effect.
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