Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) is a young intern who’s working at Sergio’s (Sean Combs) record company. When asked for ideas, Aaron brings up the fact that the ten year anniversary of Aldous Snow’s infamous show at the Greek theatre is coming up and it would probably be a great money making opportunity. So Sergio sends Aaron to England to pick up Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) and escort him to the Greek theatre sober enough to put on a show.
This is Nicholas Stoller’s sophomore movie as director/writer and he finds himself making the spin off movie based on his first film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I am a huge fan of all that is Forgetting Sarah Marshall. FSM was funny in a way that not many movies can be, it’s raunchy without feeling unnecessary. However, Get Him to the Greek reeks of unnecessary.
I loved Russell Brand in FSM. His character of Aldous Snow, was ridiculous in every way, but taking that ridiculous character and moving him from a supporting to a lead role just ruins it for me. What FSM had that this movie failed to give me was someone to root for. It was just scene after scene of Aldous trying to make Aaron get even more drunk and drugged out while having copious amounts of sex.
As it pertains to the music in the film it remains ludicrously bad in a funny way. The film opens with the music video of Aldous Snow’s career tanker, ‘African Child’, which is described by some as ‘the worst thing to happen to Africa since Apartheid’. All the songs sung in the film are all ridiculous and over the top parodies of all those overly preachy and sometimes just no longer hiding the drug references kind of rock songs that we all know and love, and I get that, but at the same time didn’t find myself laughing at it. I just sat there listening, and knowing exactly where they were going with it, and just preferred if there was real good music to listen to.
One thing that Stoller transferred from his previous film to this well was his creation of fun supporting characters. Before I get to the hilarious character that Sergio is, I want to touch on Daphne Binks (Elisabeth Moss). Daphne isn’t the kind of character that you expect to shine, and she has about twenty or so minutes of time on screen, but she comes off as completely loveable, which makes Aaron being a dick to her even worse throughout the movie. Combs’ playing a crazy record producer who needs to buy all his sons Air Jordan’s or some other madness and it works. I was falling over myself laughing every time Diddy (because that’s what we call him in the real world) was on screen. His level of insanity is just so hysterical, especially when we get to a certain scene with a one Mr. Jeffrey.
All in all it’s a poorly conceived film with a couple of funny characters and a handful of moments that will make it somewhat worth your time.
IMDB says 6.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 73%
I say 5.0/10
Finally I don't feel bad that I haven't seen this movie–even though I've heard so many mentions of it now, that I was starting to think that I missed out on something worthwhile. I simply heard "Russell Brand" in the same sentence as "Leading Actor" and decided that it can't possibly be THAT worth my time.
Now all the doubts have been quelled–awesome review.
Will still probably watch it eventually to form my own opinion, though it's definitely not on my list of priorities.
Good Review, I found it a lot funnier than you did apparently, the exaggerations of what the mainstream believe the rock and roll life is takes this one home for me, getting your personal assistant/manager to carry drugs on a plane was hilarious. it was over the top and i assume thats what it was supposed to be not to be taken seriously at all while trying to vaguely bring across a point. I would give it a solid 6.5. Deuces.