It’s not quite all Greek to me
Cinema
Daniel Carey
IN the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And after a month of horrendous comedies, the intermittently amusing effort stands like an oasis in the desert.
‘Get Him To The Greek’ is spin-off from ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’, and yet another movie from producer Judd Apatow. It features Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, who comes up with an idea to revive the flagging fortunes of the record company he works for. The plan is for British rocker Aldous Snow (played by Russell Brand) to play a concert at the Greek theatre in Los Angeles to mark the tenth anniversary of a famous gig. Aaron’s job is to get Aldous from London to LA via New York, where he is scheduled to appear on the ‘Today’ show.
The picture opens with an amusing montage which sees Snow, the lead singer of a band named Infant Sorrow, singing a song called ‘African Child’. Wearing a costume inspired by the idea that he is ‘an African white Christ from space’, he performs the video for a tune branded the worst thing to happen Africa since apartheid.
From there, his life goes into a tailspin, and among those who appear to comment on Snow’s downward spiral are Mario Lopez, last seen on Irish screens (so far as I can tell) in ‘Saved By The Bell’. The montage that takes up the first few minutes is among the funniest things in the flick.
Meanwhile, Aaron (Hill) finds himself summoned to an early-morning meeting, where his boss Sergio (Sean Combs, AKA P Diddy) is demanding new ideas. “You know how many Air Jordans six black kids wear?” the top man asks his disgruntled employees. Aaron’s idea for a Snow reunion concert is embraced, and he has 72 hours to live up to the title of the movie.
This proves more difficult than it sounds. Aldous wants to party like it’s 1999, and Aaron spends his night in London rescheduling flights until they end up clubbing together. All the stereotypes of the rock-star lifestyle are on shows here: addictions, attractions, hangers-on and the over-riding sense of a man who can do what he wants.
The morning after, a hungover Aaron makes the mistake of telling Aldous exactly what he thinks of ‘African Child’, prompting the rocker to describe their relationship as one of ‘hateful respect’. The singer’s ex, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), turns up in a cameo as the star of daytime TV show ‘Blind Medicine’.
There are some humorous scenes set in New York. Told to keep ‘the talent’ sober, Aaron downs an entire vat of alcohol and smokes a joint. He then races around a TV studio because Aldous has forgotten the words to ‘African Child’. He has a row with his girlfriend, who wants to move to Seattle to work in a hospital there. “The Nazis had doctors,” he reminds her. “Herpes is incurable,” she shoots back.
There is great chemistry between the two leads, but the tone takes a strange turn after the pair head for LA (via Las Vegas). Rather than stay in ‘Hangover’ mode, director Nicholas Stoller heads into darker territory, and things become very uneven as a result.
There are plenty of gross-out gags, more of the surprising success with women which Hill has in every outing, and an increasingly predictable trajectory. After the promising early stages, the mixtures of bawdiness and sweetness begins to grate, and the film loses its way. There’s a bizarre threesome, and an all-too-neat ending. Still, it’s better than anything that opened in June.
Rating 6 out of 10
