Get Him to the Greek  (USA) Directed by Nicolas Stoller  Written by Nicolas Stoller  Starring Jonah Hill; Russell Brand; Rose Byrne; Colm Meaney; Sean P. Diddy Combs; Elisabeth Moss; Aziz Ansari

Director Nicolas stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshallwas one of the best comedies of 2008. With Jud Apatow again producing and writer/director Stoller reprising the offbeat duo of Russell Brand (as Sarah Marshall  rock star Aldous Snow) and Jonah Hill (here playing Aaron Green, a different character), there was every reason to believe we might be in for another entertaining romp. Not so fast.

Get Him to the Greek is based on the kind of boys on a road trip behaving badly scenario constituting the plot of The Hangover. Perhaps it’s not coincedental either that, like The Hangover, much of this film takes place in Las Vegas. Like many of the offerings that comprise the recent Apatow produced and directed spate, Get Him to the Greekrelies on the premise of a lead nerd boy character who, though in a long term, committed relationship with a domineering woman, has never understood how to relate to members of the opposite sex and thusly harbors some degree of regret over the sexscapades he imagines missing out on.

The beginning of the film is a kind of prologue consisting of a series of faux interviews and clips from celebrity/entertainment shows, using some of the actual reporters from the real programs themselves to aid the authencity factor. These are combined with similarly constructed Aldous Snow music videos and concert footage. There are a couple of laughs sprinkled into the mix, and all of these re-creations are well designed and shot, but though the music too is skillfully created, none of it is that funny. As far as parody goes, the content of the songs aren’t satirical enough to make anything but the most cursory of social commentary, and while vaguely absurd, they’re not (unfortunately) that far away from actual pop songs.

Mario Lopez; Lars Ulrich; Christina Aguilera; Billy Bush; Kurt Loder; Tom Felton; Rick Schroder; Pharrell Williams; Meredith Viera; and Paul Krugman are some of those who show up playing themselves, though none of them stand out as being particularly funny or surprising. Snow’s latest single African Child  is purposefully offensive, though even this abomination feels somehow watered down, and we as audience are perhaps far less outraged than we should be.

There are plausibilitiy issues in Get Him to the Greek, starting with the notion that a multi-millionaire tycoon who owns a record company and twenty two Koo Koo Roos would allow his underling to escort a huge rock star with serious drug issues on a commercial flight when he had big money riding on said star’s impending appearance. Moguls own private jets, or at least have access to them, and these kinds of gaps in logic tear away at the walls of believability necessary even in the most absurd of comedies. The eventual abrupt shift in character made by Aaron’s uptight girlfriend Daphne also feels unrealistic, or at least like an adolescent’s plot-line solution, although admittedly the utter lack of sexiness helps to undercut this fact some. Still, the film’s young, clueless nerd perspective again feels at worse misogynistic, and at best severely arrested. Whatever “learning” takes place at the end comes across as a flimsily concealed attempt at actual drama - infused, like the rest of the more serious aspects throughout, to make us buy these broadly drawn characters as human beings.

To his credit, Sean P. Diddy Combs as boss man record exec Sergio Roma, allows his image to be subverted, and his playing against type fuels several of the films best bits. Supporting players Elisabeth Moss (as Aaron’s girlfriend ,Daphne); Colm Meany (as Aldous’s father, Jonathan); and Rose Byrne (as Aldous’s ex wife and fellow pop star, Jackie Q.), are all fine, though their characters are one dimensional and the few dramatic moments they participate in mostly fall flat. The film is at its best in small exchanges between the two leads and also during stretches when the pace is amped up, ala the hotel set piece, which careens from one ludicrous moment to the next. However, even during the best of these sections, one can’t help but recall similar set ups in a host of recent comedies, and much of the plot feels both telegraphed and warmed over.

Apatow is something of a master of the type, but he isn ‘t the director here, and the alchemy of these films is of an acutely precarious nature, with a mix of elements that require precise tonal massaging. The film has enough laughs to keep it out of flop territory, but ultimately fails to hold together as anything more than a lightweight diversion.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 1:31 am and is filed under In Theaters/Full Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.