12/13/2023 0 Comments Get him to the greek![]() Before getting to that anti-one-night-stand stance, the film must first revel in Aldous’s lothario ways and generate humor from Aaron’s attempts at machismo as well as predictably unflattering depictions of women. Stoller would have been wise leaving the proceedings light and superficial, the better to not bog his humor down with leaden moralizing about the self-inflicted pitfalls of enjoying fame and fortune to excess.Įmpathy for Aldous is in short supply and, fundamentally, anathema to enjoying his bad-boy shenanigans, but Stoller-following in Apatow’s footsteps-can’t simply indulge in nastiness for nastiness’ sake, as the director proves driven to steer the action toward feel-good conservative platitudes about maturity, sobriety, and the preeminence of monogamy. ![]() Well boo hoo for you, but rock-star whining (coupled with slams on the callous music industry) is hardly a narrative hat worth hanging a film on, a troublesome set of circumstances once the story barrels past its dutiful filthy centerpieces and realizes it has to justify its existence via a message. Like Funny People, what drama exists in the film revolves around woe-is-me celebrity misery, with Aldous explaining, in a somber third-act speech, that for all his success, he’s lonely and sad. There, he’ll perform a 10th-anniversary concert in celebration of his famous live album and, in the process, resurrect a career shattered by substance abuse, heartbreak over the departure of his raunchy singer wife Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), and a spectacularly disastrous last record called African Child that one review dubbed “the worst thing for Africa since apartheid.” Coping with a crumbling relationship to a nurse (Elisabeth Moss), Aaron is a good-hearted schlub trying to do his job while Aldous is a self-destructive ne’er-do-well, and their odd couple-on-the-road scenario leads to the type of outrageous odyssey of many a zany cinematic comedy, all tinged with producer Judd Apatow’s trademark brand of potty-mouthed sentimentality. Diddy, playing a moderately goofier version of himself) to pick up Aldous in London and transport him to L.A.’s Greek Theater. Aaron is charged by media mogul boss Sergio (P. In writer-director Nicholas Stoller’s Get Him to the Greek, Russell Brand reprises his role from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (also helmed by Stoller) as druggie sexpot rocker Aldous Snow, while his costar in that film, Jonah Hill, plays an entirely different character, record company underling Aaron Green. It has a rambly, realistic tone, with one orgiastic mishap spilling into the next, and that tone keeps much of the action popping with surprise.Now here’s a relatively new (if not necessarily welcome) idea: the sorta-kinda-not-really sequel. Yet the movie isn’t staged in an excessive way. Dance-club marathons, joints laced with every illegal substance on earth, sex in bathroom stalls, lots and lots of puking: Aaron experiences it all, including (hilariously) being forced to act as an impromptu drug mule. It’s the hanging around - the doing whatever you want to do, right into the morning after. The film’s director, Nicholas Stoller (who also helmed Forgetting Sarah Marshall), knows that the real pleasure of rock-star decadence isn’t just the drugs or the sex. Except that the detours and disasters all grow directly out of Aldous’ personality, as he invites Aaron to share the live-for-the-moment excess of the rock-star lifestyle. Get Him to the Greek has a conventional After Hours one-calamity-after-another setup. If the gig is a success, he’ll dispel the stench of ”Africa’s Child,” his incredibly condescending bomb of a single that sent his career into a druggy tailspin. Aaron, a lowly record company intern played by Jonah Hill, has 72 hours to shepherd Aldous from London to New York, where he is set to appear on Today, and then on to Los Angeles, where he’s scheduled to do a comeback concert at the Greek Theater on the 10th anniversary of his last, triumphant appearance there.
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