Get him to the Greek

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of my favorite comedies of the last few years. It was kind of unexpectedly brilliant and honest. Plus it featured a Dracula musical with puppets. It is tough to beat that. When I heard they were spinning off Russell Brand's Aldous Snow character, I was concerned, but with Nicolas Stoller (The Director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) at the helm and writing it, I thought it could work. I also think Jonah Hill has the potential to be a very funny actor, although, I think he needs to work in the darker realms of comedy to realize this potential. Yet, when the trailer came out, I was severely underwhelmed. It just did not look that funny. Trailers can be misleading, but the biggest crime a comedy trailer can commit is to not make me laugh. What is the point of going to see the movie if 150 seconds of footage do not make me laugh. When the reviews came out and were pretty positive, I did not get my hopes up, but I was certainly a little more interested in seeing it. Were the critics right?

Aldous Snow(Brand) was the world's last rock star. He was hedonistic, arrogant and knew how party, but he sobered up. He was the biggest star in the world until he tried to solve the problem of genocide in Africa with a horribly racist song and album. His girlfriend(Rose Byrne) of seven sober years dumped him and Snow did a nosedive right back into the partying lifestyle, becoming less and less known for his music. With the music business in the tank, Music Executive, Sergio Roma(Diddy) is looking for the idea that will jump start his hurting label. Enter Aaron Green(Jonah Hill) with an idea to get Aldous Snow to put on a show at The Greek to celebrate 10 years since he last played there and made a live album from it that turned out to be the biggest selling live album ever. Roma decides to let Green run point on the project and Green has 72 hours to get Snow from London to Los Angeles. It will not be an easy task, as Snow prefers drugs, alcohol and women to anything else and Green is not exactly a force to be reckoned with. There is also a side plot involving Green and his girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) and how they cannot seem to get on the same page and even maybe break up.

For the first 75 minutes Get him to the Greek is a hilarious movie. It moves quickly, the jokes are fast and funny and the action keeps moving. We get all of the drugs, girls and alcohol a throwback rock star deserves and Diddy straight up kills the movie with his over the top persona, not unlike his actual persona. His lines are delivered with this reckless abandon and it works for me. Hill prefers a more subtle, quiet approach and his quiet demeanor mixed with Brand's outlandish personality creates a nice little balance of comic styles. Brand also does a little bit of acting that really works, especially as he orders Hill to get him drugs. You can see the recovering addict digging into his own life. The girls are sexy, the music is funny whne it is supposed to be funny and the soundtrack under the film is excellent and probably pretty expensive. The Las Vegas sequence is inspired comic genius with this wonderful physical comedy infused with just these ridiculous sight gags about petting the furry walls and this super drug called "Jeffrey."

However, once the movie actually gets to Los Angeles it just kind of dies. I honestly do not care about Snow's quest to get his girlfriend back and then the movie takes a totally weird and uncomfortable turn with an almost threesome between Aaron, his girlfriend and Snow. I am not sure if Stoller just ran out of ideas for his movie and threw together a long, unfunny and awkward climatic set piece spanning nearly 30 minutes, but it was pretty obnoxious. Not only does it stop being funny, but the pacing totally slows down. The movie just comes to a stand still and even the very last scene, which is pretty funny cannot bring the movie around fully. It is really disappointing because the movie builds up a lot of good will in that first section, but quickly destroys it all.

Russell Brand may never really get beyond this persona and Jonah Hill really needs to play in the darker realm of comedy, but the movie does offer plenty of good laughs. Diddy shines which surprised me and Stoller's loose directing style allows for some inspired moments, like Hill's drug trip with little Diddy heads popping up and each other. It reminded me of Stoller and Jason Segal's daring idea to use puppets to sing a ridiculous Dracula musical. I think Stoller has better things ahead of him, he just needs to figure out how to reel himself in when his ending start to spin out of control.

Final Grade: C