Wow. Get Him To The Greek is so much freakin’ fun, it’s hard to know where to start.
I’ll be really careful with this review because I don’t want to telegraph any jokes or reveal any actual scenes because it’s too much fun to go along to this movie and see it explode right before your eyes.
Russell Brand stars as Aldous Snow – a rock legend whose career and love life are suffering due to one acutely terrible record he released. Enter Jonah Hill as Aaron Green who’s a big fan and
a record company exec who has to make sure Aldous gets to a venue for a gig that might resurrect his popularity.
What happens next is a bromance / mismatched buddy road movie that has successfully sprung out of the Judd Apatow / Nicholas Stoller team who have collectively and separately been the creative force behind a heap of hit comedies such as Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This is the rom com where the Greek characters got a start. But unlike Saturday Night Live sketches and characters which only sometimes translated to feature length films on the big screen, Get Him To The Greek is fat enough with substance to work. It rings so true, it verges on feeling like a mockumentary, a rockumentary and a documentary all rolled into one.
Aldous is a self-indulgent drug addicted rock god who wants to have fun whenever he wants and he does. But he misses his main girl Jackie Q (Rose Byrne) after she takes up with another rock god. (Wait til you see who’s playing himself in this role!)
Aaron’s very safe de facto relationship is severely tested.
The really good thing about this movie is it reinstates sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as an exciting, fun and viable career choice because despite the health risks, it provides a full life that will give you plenty of great stories and memories – provided your brain can still remember stuff after or if you get clean and sober.
The comic lines are original.
The visual comedy is outstanding.
The gross-out humour is appropriate.
The acting is pretty good – particularly by P Diddy aka Sean Combs who plays record company head honcho Sergio. His insights and justifiably inflated idea of himself is profound. Sergio is to P Diddy as Les Grossman is to Tom Cruise.
Rose Byrne demonstrated that exciting and mostly rare combination of being very funny with good comedic timing while at the same time being ridiculously good-looking.
Russell Brand and Jonah Hill are hilarious, honest and well-cast co-stars. Jonah embodies the desires and lack of physical beauty that typifies a lot of extreme nerds while Russell seems to take the best of Mick Jagger, Gene Simmons, David Bowie and Tommy Lee then come up with a rock god that, yeah – I would want to worship at the grand altar of The Greek Theatre.
Hats off to Leesa Evans – the Costumer in charge of wardrobe. Aldous’ rock god outfits are just sensational and get this – Carrie in Sex & The City 2 had 42 outfit changes – in Get Him To The Greek – Aldous Snow has 60. He also wears Yves Saint Laurent heeled boots for men – in every colour. She got Russell into heels to help give him that rock star posture. Apparently he liked them so much, he rarely takes them off now in real life. Life imitating art, eh.
Aaron’s wardrobe was all about t shirts with the band names he loves – and they’re bands Jonah really does love.
The soundtrack? Download it now. (But buy it first of course.) What a winner – with song lyrics that would make Spinal tap proud. You’ll get some early Stones, Ramones and other classic tracks along with a heap of Russell Brand singing as well.
Get Him To The Greek is a superb fun ride and seeing it made my day. I left the cinema wanting more of the movie and more of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
The only teeny ** spoiler ** I might mention is this: The Furry Wall. After this movie is in wide release, The Furry Wall will become an iconic touchstone that everyone will know about and use. After we go too far – it’ll help us come back to that warm safe place that INXS sang about in that song way back when: Elegantly Wasted.
Hey, waste no time getting to the Greek.