Get Him to the Greek review

Dir: Nicholas Stoller
Cast: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand
Running time: 108 minutes

Warning: there may be some spoilers in this review, but this isn't a movie that relies heavily on its spoilers so I doubt it matters much.

There was a special advanced screening of "Get Him to the Greek" in State College last night and I got the opportunity to go. After the movie, Jonah Hill and Russell Brand showed up and did a Q&A with the audience. All-in-all, it was a hell of a fun time.

The movie, itself? Pretty enjoyable. There are definitely plenty of laughs to be had in this movie. Jonah Hill and Russell Brand work great together and their chemistry is the key for making this movie work, as a whole. There's also a sweet supporting performance by Elisabeth Moss who may be better known for her work on the tv show, Mad Men.

The plot of the film is fairly simple. Aaron Green, record company intern, (Jonah Hill) must get Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) from London to Los Angeles within a certain amount of time so that he'll perform his 10 year anniversary show at the Greek theatre which apparently was a huge hit at the time and Aldous Snow is presently in the twilight of his career. Green is hoping that the anniversary show could help resurrect Snow's career, but once he meets Aldous Snow, he realizes that this task will be a lot more difficult than he originally had hoped for.

Nicholas Stoller does a great job with providing plenty of material for Hill and Brand to work with. Another big part of this movie is Sean "Puffy" Combs's performance as Aaron Green's boss Sergio. You can tell Combs really put 100% into his role and made his character a lot funnier than he probably was originally.

That being said, this film is certainly not without its flaws. Nicholas Stoller, whose last film was "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," has quite a knack for the gratuity. There's lot of gratuitous sex and boobs in this movie just like in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and while most of the gratuity still manages to fall in line with the overall tone of the movie (and I certainly have no problem with it, overall), there is a point about 3/4s into the movie where it all kind of falls apart.

The film has a very weak final act and the characters make decisions that do not seem to fall in line with their previous logic. For instance, there's a scene later in the movie where Aldous Snow coerces Aaron Green and Green's girlfriend Daphne into a threesome. Aaron Green isn't feeling the situation at all, but Daphne apparently is open to it because it would be payback for her boyfriend's infidelities throughout his trip from London to LA. It was kinda disheartening seeing such a sweet character go the raunchy route and what resulted was a very awkward, cringeworthy threesome scene; from there, the movie's tone abruptly switches from being a wacky, raunchy comedy into awkwardly dramatic territory. Perhaps if they wrote Daphne's character differently, it would've worked better, but nobody really seems into it anyway. Of course, Daphne realizes halfway through that she doesn't want to go through with it, but by then the damage is pretty much done.

Stoller does this with "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" too, if you remember, when the main character accepts oral sex from his ex-girlfriend before realizing that it's wrong like halfway through. Why do these characters have to go through such lengths only to come to the obvious , correct conclusion? The scenes are way more awkward than they are funny and the movie just kind of ends shortly afterward without a satisfying enough conclusion. So while "Get Him to the Greek" has plenty of laughs for the first 3/4 of the movie, that awkward threesome scene almost ruined it.

So, that was pretty disappointing overall, but I asked Jonah Hill after the screening about how comfortable he felt showing his rear end in the movie and he said that you have to realize who the general audience is for the movie. He's comfortable doing scenes like that because he wants to go the extra mile to get laughs out of the audience. I respect that and I appreciate actors like Jonah Hill who are willing to go that far just for laughs. I just wish there was a better way he could've demonstrated such "boldness," so to speak.

Overall, however, the movie is a lot funnier than what I originally thought it'd be. You figure a movie that's a spin-off of another movie may come off as flat and the actors are just doing it for a paycheck, but that's not the case here at all. Like I said, the movie kind of falls apart toward the end and it fell way short of being a comedy classic, but it definitely has plenty of moments to keep you laughing most of the way through.

rating: 7/10

Get Him to the Greek opens everywhere on June 4th.