Get Him to the Greek

(109 min, 2010)
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Writers: Nicholas Stoller, Jason Segel (characters)
Stars: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand and Elisabeth Moss
 

Anarchy in LA.

A record company intern (Jonah Hill) is hired to accompany out-of-control British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to a concert at L.A.'s Greek Theater.

If you want to laugh uncontrollably for a good amount of time, just go to youtube and type either “Jonah Hill + Letterman” or “Russell Brand + Letterman”. Those two are wonderful comedians, even when you watch talk show with them you can't stop laughing. So as soon as I heard they are doing movie together I couldn't wait to see it.

I know there are many people who are against this new trend in comedy – that trend includes tons of drugs, swearing and vomiting but also promotes true values like love, friendship, loyalty. I have absolutely no problem with crude humor as long as it is funny – one of my favorite comedies of all time is “Superbad” including Hill, too many f words to count, period blood and drunk chicks. And it's OK, because it's actually close to real life – anyone who was under aged and wanted to buy booze will understand – and it's amazingly funny. “Get him to the Greek” fits the trend perfectly – it has a happy ending and very bumpy, f-word decorated road to it.

The movie is a spin-off of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, it features the same character Aldous Snow, British rock star. Brand is playing himself here – always with shockingly open shirt, impressive vocabulary and colorful terms and metaphors, completely out of control behavior and a history of drug abuse. Even if he's not even required to put much effort, apart from few scenes near the end, he's fantastic in the movie – it makes you kinda sad we don't really have such rock stars anymore. Hill plays charming loser, as always, and as always – he's hilarious. The moment when he tried to pull off British accent was so funny it brought me to tears. The power of those movies, as with “Knocked up”, “The Hangover” and others is the fact that you genuinely like the characters, you care about them, because even if they are not perfect, glamorous and more often then not so ordinary, they are just insanely likeable.



“Get him to the Greek” has many surprises – two actress from serious productions: Elizabeth Moss from hit show “Mad Men” and Rose Byrne from “Damages” try to be funny and whilst in first case it's not that impressive, Byrne really shocks here. She is amazingly funny and has great chemistry with Russell. I don't know on who her character Jackie Q, was based on – it was either Brand's real life girlfriend Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. Most likely it was the two of them mixed in one character – the effect is great. Although as Emily Blunt's fan I'm a bit sad she had to leave the project and Byrne was cast instead.

The movie also has quite fanny performance by Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs although I wasn't very impressed by him. Some of the jokes didn't work out the best and he clearly lacks the brilliant timing and sense of what's funny that Brand and Hill have.

The soundtrack is quite amusing, because it contains songs both by Jackie Q and by Aldous Snow, however in the movie we hear a lot of truly fantastic music that fits crazy parties we watch and the story well – we have songs by the Clash, Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones and Ramons, among others. The film has great depictions of out of control parties and something that made me laugh and then made me sad – Carla Gallo. That woman plays whores in everything she's in, with the exception of “Bones”. What's wrong with her? She's very funny, but it's kinda disturbing when you look on her list of appearances throughout the years and the roles she took.

“Get him to the Greek” has a fair amount of humor that certainly won't appeal to more sophisticated audiences, but personally, I laughed each time Hill's character ended up covered in vomit. The film changes the pace, the settings and the tone quite a few times, but each of those moments contains hilarious scenes and brilliantly written dialogues. Plus the prologue is so great it will definitely encourage you to see entire movie.

This is the funniest movie since last year's hit and Golden Globe winner “The Hangover”, however not funnier - “The Hangover” never lost its pace and never drifted off too far from comedy, plus it's the story so universal the movie is an instant classic. “Get him to the Greek” falls into sentimentality and ends up being a little boring near the end, but the end itself is very funny (“You look like a lesbian!”). However, the movie is funny enough to watch it many times, and in my ranking near the end of the year will most likely be one of the funniest comedies, maybe even beaten only by “Due Date” (which had trailer that made me laugh so hard I cried). If you like Brand, Hill or comedies about out of control rock stars (like underrated “Still Crazy”) go watch this one.

78/100