A film review by Craig J. Koban June 10, 2010 |
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GET HIM TO THE GREEK
Aaron Green: Jonah Hill / Aldous Snow: Russell Brand / Jackie
Q: Rose Byrne / Daphne Binks: Elisabeth Moss / Jonathan Snow: Colm
Meaney / Sergio Roma: Sean Combs |
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Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) has hit absolute rock bottom at the beginning of GET HIM TO THE GREEK. You
may remember him as the unrelentingly narcissistic and
hedonistic British rock star in FORGETTING SARAH
MARSHALL. In that
film he was a successful lead singer of a band called Infant Sorrow and
his songs and videos were sanctimoniously hilarious and self-aggrandizing riffs on world peace and
harmony (his "We Got to Do Something" had him flashing cards
that say "Buy Green" juxtaposed against him miming intercourse
with nuns). His latest Magnum opus of
schlock and awe (shown in a hilarious montage at the beginning of GET HIM
TO THE GREEK) is called "African Child".
So smug and utterly full of himself in on-set interviews during
the making of it, Snow self-confidently describes himself as a “White-African-Jesus.” It
gets worse. The video –
which he made with his girlfriend and fellow musician, Jackie Q (Rose
Byrne) – is so
naively offensive that critics quickly lambasted it as wretched drivel:
one noted that it was the worst thing to happen to black culture since
the Rodney King beatings, whereas another humorously christened it as the
worst atrocity to befall Africa since apartheid.
Having once been a heavy boozer and habitual drug user, Snow once
again returns to his pathetic ways after the single all but ruins his
career and sends him into a narcotic tailspin.
This leads him to breaking up with
Jackie Q and just when her career
begins to take off. Confounding
Aldous' situation further is that the couple has a son named Naples that may or may not
be his. The final nail in
Aldous’ coffin is that he also laments about his own father’s
absenteeism in his life over the last several years.
He becomes lonely, miserable, and without much hope in the world. A
savoir, of sorts, enters Aldous’ increasingly destabilized world in the
form or Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), a young, determined, and energetic
intern that works at Pinnacle Records in L.A..
He too has his own form of relationship woes: his long-terms
girlfriend (MAD MEN’s delightful Elizabeth Moss) is an interning doctor that works
such late hours that she barely is able to spend time with Aaron, let
alone see him. Aaron also has
problems on the work front: his head boss, Sergio (in a career-changing
performance by Sean Combs) is a f-bomb uttering, trash talking slave
driver that never hesitates to reveal to his underlings how utterly pathetic they
are. After several ideas are
colorfully mocked by Sergio, the sheepish Aaron reveals his master plan to
him: convince Aldous Snow to return to the Greek Theatre for a tenth
anniversary performance to commemorate when his career was at its apex.
Begrudgingly,
Sergio accepts Aaron’s plan, seeing as Pinnacle is losing money fast and
they need a big score. He
then orders Green to go to the U.K., pick up Snow, and then safely and
securely bring him to an interview on NBC’s THE TODAY SHOW and then to
the big concert in L.A.. The
trek involves going from London to New York to Las Vegas and to L.A. and all within 72 hours. Aaron, at least initially, thinks that this is his dream job,
seeing that he is a worshiper of Aldous’ for years. However, it soon becomes abundantly clear very early on that
Aldous’ toxically self-destructive lifestyle of sex, drugs, rock and roll and all
other manners of depravity have no bounds, which makes Aaron’s mission
to deliver him on time in America all the more of a Herculean challenge. GET
HIM TO THE GREEK is not a sequel to FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, the latter
being one of the best romcoms of its year or any other.
That film introduced us to Russell Brand’s freewheeling, profane
and perversely likeable rocker, not to mention that it also featured Jonah
Hill, albeit in a totally different role (in that film he played Hawaiian
hotel employee with an obsessive fanboy-crush for Aldous that reached creepy levels).
I would more aptly describe GET HIM TO THE GREEK as a spin-off,
which is a term that usually has me sighing and shaking my head in
disappointment. However, the
director of MARSHALL, Nicholas Stroller, has returned to not only helm
GREEK, but he also wrote the screenplay. The end result is a film that –
much to the Judd Apatow canon of screen comedy (he also produced) – is
another finely tuned and uproarious amalgam of lewd and crude raunch with
a warm and underplayed sentimentality.
Bawdiness mixed with sugar sweetness – and it just the right
doses – is a decidedly tough act to pull off, but films like KNOCKED
UP,
THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, and now GET HIM TO THE GREEK show their
effortless command of the formula. The
film has wall-to-wall slapstick, gross-out gags, and scatological
silliness galore, but underneath all of that is a willingness to explore
depths to its respective characters that usually would not be there in
other witless comedies. The
film also has a scandalous amount of fun as a rock star satire, showcasing
Aldous at his most outrageously provocative and eroticized (his music lyrics
are howlers). All of this, of
course, would never work without the tenaciously randy performance by
Russell Brand, who is able to deliver the most offensive and potty-mouthed diatribes in an oddly
sincere manner (my favourite line involves him
stating, "Don't think of it as a threesome…think of it as having sex
with your girlfriend, while someone else also has sex with your
girlfriend”). Brand’s
performance and the script are also sly and nimble for how well they
underscores Aldous' wounded psyche that was rarely on the
screen in MARSHALL. Brand, in
real life, has had his share of problems with addictions to sex, heroin,
and alcohol (a most lethal trifecta, if there ever was one) and has
famously been involved in public licentiousness.
I think that his personal history gives his performance an added level
of texture and complexity. For
sure, he can play a wanton and excessive boozer and partier with the best
of them, but when he has to play quieter and more introspective moments in
the film amidst all of the vulgarity on display, he comes across as
believably heartfelt. The
other half of the film’s comedic dynamic duo is Jonah Hill, who is the
perfect foil to Brand’s flamboyant eccentricities.
Hill is short, massively rotund, and fairly meek looking, and he is
one of the shrewdest young actors at bridging the gap between playing up broad physical
high jinks with moments of childlike sweetness (as Aldous amusingly tells
him at one point, "You look like a boy that has just discovered his
first erection"). Hill brings a surprisingly level of humility and vulnerability to
Aaron, and to see his straight laced and by-the-book schlub slowly succumb to
Snow’s unhinged rock star decadence provides the
film’s most riotous laughs. We
are driven to laugh even harder because Aaron is essentially
coerced into doing everything asked of him, mostly to appease Aldous, but
also
to get him to his destination safely and securely so that Sergio does not
kill the poor sap. They
are several wickedly funny moments in the film: There’s a great scene where
Sergio instructs Aaron to completely limit Aldous’ intake of anything
“bad”, so Aaron proceeds to smoke, drink, and take all of Snow illicit
substances that he has on his person while on route to THE TODAY SHOW,
with predictably inspiring results.
Later on there is a fast and furious montage of Aaron’s hapless
attempts to secure Aldus with some heroin.
The film then builds to two climatic comic highpoints, the first of which occurs during a pit stop at a
strip club where Aldous and Aaron hook up with Aldous’ estranged dad
during which Aaron smokes a very lethal joint called a
“Geoffrey” that culminates in him having a minor heart attack and with
Aldous stabbing him an adrenaline needle to his heart (the sheer comic
ferocity and intensity of the whole scene is infectious).
The second scene involves a very distraught and depressed Aldous
making an impromptu visit to Aaron’s apartment where he offers both him
and his girlfriend a
way to get out of their own relationship foibles: a three-way with him.
The scene goes from odd to hilariously odder. The film also generates some surprisingly strong comedic performances from the supporting cast. Rose Byrne is a peculiar choice for a film like this, but her cheeky and loopy portrayal as the girl that got away from Aldous is a giddy delight. Then there is Sean “Diddy” Combs as the Pinnacle Records head honcho that nearly hijacks the film away from the other participants. Combs does something special here with a fairly marginal character: he makes Sergio so invitingly repressible, vile and crude; he's a lovably unhinged figure of menace throughout. He also occupies a very funny scene where he explains to Aaron the art of “Mind f - - cking” people to get what he wants. Aaron deadpans back, “I hope your wearing a condom, because I have a dirty mind.” Combs then illustrates how to convey a perfectly captured stone cold reaction for just the right hysterical effect. |
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