Surprising Turns, in Story and Acting
Sergio Reviews “Get Him to the Greek”
2010-06-03
By Sergio Mims

CAST: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Rose Byrne, Colm Meaney
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Stoller
*** 1/2 THREE AND A HALF STARS

Contrary to popular belief, there is an art and skill in putting together a good, outrageous, gross-out comedy. Many comedies try to be crude, rude and shocking, but most of the time they turn out as humorless, flatfooted, incompetently made disasters that make the mistake of equating grossness with funny-ness.

For a gross out comedy to work you need real inventiveness, genuine comic talent, sharp timing, originality and, most importantly, characters that we truly care about, so that when they caught up in some crazy outrageousness it’s even funnier than it should. That in a nutshell describes writer and director Nicholas Stoller’s (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) new comedy, Get Him to the Greek.

In what is proving so far to be a pretty dismal summer film season with three more unpromising months yet to go, Greek is almost like a burst of sunshine. Like other films produced by Judd
Apatow and his patented laugh factory machine ( 40 Year Old Virgin, Step Brothers, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express etc), Greek is a nasty, rude, tasteless film, but with a heart of gold. It’s also  fast paced, immensely entertaining, relentlessly and ruthlessly funny with a bit of genuine substance despite all the tomfoolery.

Rock star Aldous Snow (wonderfully played by cutting edge British comic Russell Brand), is in a bad shape. His latest album is a horrendous and embarrassing flop, his career is now in tatters, he’s reeling from his very public break up from his talentless model girlfriend (Bryne), whose crummy record is a surprise hit -  to add insult to injury - and he’s falling deep into a spiral of booze and drugs.

The head of his record company (Combs), still in shock over the awfulness of Snow’s last album, needs something and soon, not only to revive his career but also the fortunes of his record label as well. A lowly company employee Aaron (Hill) comes up with a solution. Why not have Snow do a special anniversary performance carried live all over the world from the Greek Theater in Los Angeles where he first burst into fame?

Combs agrees to the idea provided Aaron can get Snow from London to L.A. in three days in time for the concert. Of course high jinks, wild gags and insanity ensue while both Aaron and Snow both come to understand each other and grow into self awareness battling their inner doubts and demons.

After appearing in major supporting roles in seemingly countless movies in just the past few years, the corpulent Hill, with his naive expression, finally takes the lead as the star and he shines with full range. Not so much playing his usual sad sack role, but this time as an underappreciated underling with a feisty independent streak who realizes that his mission could be a golden opportunity. Brand is a riot, not only is he hysterical as the hedonistic rock star Snow, but also adept at peeling away layers of depth revealing a scared, insecure person who’s deathly afraid that he’s lost whatever he once had that put him on the top.

But a real surprise is Combs. More than just a brief cameo, Combs is given plenty of uproarious stand out scenes and will prove,  to the amazement of audiences, that he can convincingly pull off comedy, which is not nearly as easy as people think. And he almost steals the film from everyone during the high point of the film, a crazy Las Vegas visit which I will not spoil. But it’s a miniature masterpiece of comic structure, pacing and timing which starts slowly and builds in intensity and piling on layers of jokes into a madcap climax of insanity.

Definitely not for all tastes or sensibilities, Get Him to the Greek is a marvelous, rambunctious and side splitting funny comedy and one of those rare films where it all just comes together.