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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Get Him to the Greek (Review)



“I love Judd Apatow, and I mostly enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but Get Him to the Greek just seems unnecessary to me.”
-Esteemed movie critic Matthew W. Kraus

What a moron. Get Him to the Greek is the best comedy of this year by far, and it puts films like MacGruber (which I rather largely overrated with a 3-star review, looking back. It’s also not going to make back its cheap $10 million budget) to shame. The Judd Apatow producing stamp has given us some of the best comedies of the last decade, and his directorial work has given us two comedic masterpieces and one would-a-could-a film. This film is a spinoff of the pretty good Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and at the moment I think it surpasses it.

Is this a comedic masterpiece? Probably not. In fact, the film doesn’t start great. It begins with a trip through various Entertainment Tonight-esque shows chronicling the downfall of Aldous Snow, the frontman of the rock band Infant Sorrow. These are rather predictable pieces of work, and when we first meet Jonah Hill as intern Aaron Green it doesn’t quite lift off yet. In fact, this film marks the first time I have not laughed at Aziz Ansari in a long time, who appears in a small part alongside Nick Kroll.

But then we meet Sean “Diddy” Combs as Sergio Roma, the head of Pinnacle Records. Boy, did this performance surprise me. The best thing about this performance is that he does not overstay his welcome. He shows up for small moments of hilarity throughout, and near the end he goes insane in a sublime sequence which shows what an evil genius Sergio is.

Anyhoo, Aaron Green is sent to London to pick up Aldous Snow and get him back to Los Angeles in time for the 10 year anniversary concert of Infant Sorrow Live at the Greek Theatre. He does so, and hilarity ensues. This time, I mean it.

This is Russell Brand’s move from the get-go, and he remains as brilliant here as he was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. While in that film he was more one-dimensional, here there exists a full-fledged character behind the persona, and we buy every second of it. That’s the trademark of the best Apatow comedies: The people we’re laughing at are actual people, no matter how ridiculous the situation around them. There is not a drastic leap in logic or shot at a cheap laugh throughout, and that was so refreshing.

I can’t give too much credit to Apatow here, though. The director here is Nicholas Stoller, who also did Sarah Marshall and knows these characters like the back of his hand. He handles the sequences of Aaron’s drug and alcohol binges expertly, and I laughed throughout. Also, this film includes some great celebrity cameos, including Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy of Harry Potter), Meredith Viera, and in the winner of the "John McCain in 24 Award for Most Random Celebrity Cameo": New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. The only cameo I did not like was Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Mostly because I think he’s a piece of the trash the world would be better without.

The relationship that develops between Aaron and Aldous is completely organic, and I think that’s a testament to the acting talents of Brand and Hill. Jonah Hill in particular gives what I believe to be the best performance of his young career here, and he is also in the movie Cyrus which I will try to see if it ends up playing nearby. Up to this point Hill has played funny fat guy, while here he is a slightly more well-rounded character. So good is he here that I actually buy his relationship with his girlfriend Daphne, played by Elisabeth Moss of Mad Men and The West Wing. The weirdest part is that this relationship goes through the usual Hollywood motions, but goes somewhere a little darker toward the end, and thus I cared about it.

In fact, as a whole this movie is very good at going toward the expected ending in unexpected ways. As usual with these Aldous Snow-type characters, there are some daddy issues, but they are presented in a better way than most. There is also a song reveal during the denouement which is pure genius. The music in general is pretty good basic rock-pop stuff, not quite to the level of Dewey Cox, but good enough. I buy Aldous Snow as the rock God.

Seeing Get Him to the Greek really revealed how terrible a year this has been for comedy so far. This is leaps and bounds ahead of everything else that has come out this year in the genre, and it shows that despite the fact that last year was not the company’s banner year, the Apatow machine is still going strong.

Rating: (out of 4)

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