GET HIM TO THE GREEK review: rock, roll, and regret

GET HIM TO THE GREEK review: rock, roll, and regret

Jun 14

I have to be honest: I’ve never liked Russell Brand; there’s something inherently nasty in his delivery that grates with me. I used to like Jonah Hill back when he played man-children, like in Superbad; but as he tries his hand at more mature roles the schtick starts to wear thin. A movie starring both of them was never high on my to-see list, but I thought I’d give Get Him To The Greek a chance anyway.

The concept for Greek seemed like fun when I first heard about it — take a narcissistic, drug-addled rock-star and rush him through various amusing situations in order to get him somewhere in time for a big gig; the trailers backed this idea up, and my hopes for the project rose. The finished movie, though, is a completely different beast from what was advertised, focusing more on strange, irritating characters than the time-limited plot device that made Greek sound so interesting to begin with.

Let’s look first at Brand’s eccentric rockstar Aldous Snow, feeling here like re-heated leftovers from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, rather than a true continuation of the character. Apparently he does drugs, but we never actually see that happening. He talks about kicking the habit and being clean, but then he later contradicts himself. His musical performances sound suspiciously auto-tuned, like he’s just lip-syncing to a backing band. There’s no talk of how involved Aldous Snow is in the process of writing his own songs. There’s barely a whimper about Aldous’ past relationship with another popstar (Rose Byrne), and the possibly illegitemate child Aldous helped to raise.

There’s no rhyme or reason to any single thing Aldous Snow does — and he does some bafflingly strange things towards the end of the film — and the sheer otherness of the central character damages Greek almost beyond repair.

Now for Jonah Hill’s fast-talking bumbler Aaron Green. I can’t imagine a record company exec hiring someone who looks or sounds as ridiculous as Jonah Hill does, but this is a comedy, so we’ll let it slide. What’s up with Aaron’s rude girlfriend, then? Does his low self-esteem dupe him into staying with someone who’s more like a leech on his existence than a true life-partner? Does Aaron like any music besides Aldous Snow’s?

Aaron Green is supposed to be the straight man, the cipher through which the audience interprets Aldous’ zany behaviour, but Aaron is just as slippery and alien as Aldous, so he doesn’t really fill the role required of him.

Let’s address the comedy elements of the film, then. The best moment in the film for me came with Lars Ulrich’s cameo at the end, because it was something I could relate to real life, something that was funny outside the context of the film. The rest of the laughs — mostly derived from Sean Combs’ high-energy performance as Aaron’s boss — feel forced and hollow.

Aldous’ abusive dad (played by Colm Meaney — he’s a long way from Deep Space 9 now, isn’t he?) viciously berates his son, and we’re expected to laugh, but there’s no pay-off for the relationship. Aldous just cops it on the shoulder and moves on, not digesting anything or changing himself, and Aldous’ dad remains this creepily antagonistic force hovering over Aldous’ character like an oppressive cloud, halfway through pure comedic device and genuinely important character.

A big element of successful comedy films is their sheer quotability. Genius comic timing combined with a genuinely funny line in context creates memorability. I can drop half a dozen comedy lines off the top of my head (“It’s just soccer!”, “Holy Santa Claus shit!”, “But isn’t Betty a woman’s name?”, “Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus”, “I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley”, and “You have just been erased”, or anything else that comes out of Arnie’s mouth, ever) but I can’t remember a single line from Get Him To The Greek.

I know it’s hard to marry larger-than-life characters with a cohesive plot, but you only have to look to Superbad to see a good model of the marriage working just fine. There you had a few sharply-defined characters struggling to get somewhere by a certain time in order to fulfill the biggest goal in their teenaged lives. There was humour, heartache, and genuine character — but here in Greek, there’s half-finished characters funneled quickly through a half-baked plot, and nothing ever really feels like it gels.

To be fair, though, Sean Combs is initially amusing as the record company exec with serious yelling problems; some of Aldous’ songs echo Spinal Tap numbers, so that’s kind of amusing; Rose Byrne gives an earnest if completely tangential performance as Aldous’ ex-wife; and Russell Brand manages to dial down the Brand-iness of his performance, resulting in a more restrained, slightly less irritating character.

But the small amount of positives hardly outweigh the raft of negatives plaguing this depressingly flat film. What could have saved Get Him To The Greek was a fresh writer coming at the latest draft and injecting some life and direction to the plot and characters, and a complete re-structuring of the plot, axeing the elements that don’t work (the ex-wife, the abusive father, Aaron’s depressingly belligerent girlfirend) and substituting good old-fashioned comedy set-pieces in their place. Either that or some good old-fashioned extended improv comedy.

What could have been a tight and hilarious romp through the world of a self-absorbed nitwit stumbled somewhere along the line, and instead we ended up a loose and infrequently amusing tumble through the world of Russell Brand’s mind — not exactly my idea of a fun way to spend 90 minutes of my life. Hopefully now that we’ve got him to the Greek, we can leave him there. Forever.

Get Him To The Greek