In GET HIM TO THE GREEK, sweet geek and uber-fan Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) gets to live his dream of hanging out with his idol rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). The dream includes getting the notoriously difficult musician to the eponymous Greek Theater from London in 72 hours and its more than a chance to trip the light fantastic for Aaron. The anniversary concert that will re-start Aldous career, and get the record company out of the red, was Aarons idea, so his job is also on the line. Reality being what it is, the dream gets a bit tattered as Aldous the person proves to be everything a rock star should be, the which Aaron, for all his devotion to the art form and career within it as a numbers drone, hadnt quite realized. Hes about to find out that sex and drugs and rock & roll isnt a slogan, its a lifestyle. A lifestyle that has little to do with the real world where Aaron toils.
Its the set-up for the classic buddy film, where opposites collide with hilarious results, and there is no shortage of belly laughs to be found here. Many of them provoked by the most inappropriate of stimuli, putative male rape at the hands, and sex toy, of a groupie/musician, for example, yet the context, the writing, and most of all the performances render that point moot. There is a real chemistry between the serpentine Brand, engaging in his curiously calm and impersonal type of narcissism, and Hill, a roly-poly people pleaser forced to think on his feet while his head swims in a haze of controlled substances and befuddlement at the alien life form in his custody.
This flick is set in the cinematic universe created by executive producer Judd Apatow where humor and truths about human nature easily co-exist. Hence Aldous Snow from FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL created by Apatow alum Jason Segal, and the cameo by Kristen Bell as Sarah Marshall, the titular object of that previous film. Further hence, this is more than a squalid excuse to see Aaron regularly throw up while attempting to keep up with Aldous, struggle with being an impromptu drug mule for Aldous, and taking an adrenalin shot to the heart from Aldous. This is a collision between to men who haven’t come against each other’s types before, and they hold a grotesque fascination each for the other. Writer/director Nicholas Stoller makes the novel choice of having them both be a refreshing mixture of smart and dumb. Aaron, able to crunch numbers and spin a pitch that will resurrect Aldous’ career, but unable to resist telling him the truth about the vanity album that sank that career despite a strict interdiction on such truths by those who know better. Aldous, addicted to drugs and his ego, yet fiendishly clever enough to come up with a novel and suitably self-serving and universally appealing definition of monogamy, and to precisely dissect his feelings for Aaron, a layer of respect for the honesty, peppered with hate for that honesty.
Caught between his sleep-deprived intern girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) who decides to uproot him without asking, and his megalomaniac savvy but ethically challenged boss (Sean Combs, who adds comedian to his already long resume), while also riding herd on the textbook definition of the dangers of co-dependency, Aarons task becomes a vision quest, complete with clever hallucinations, played out in London, New York, Los Angeles, and, of course, the neon-bright desert realm of Las Vegas where Aldous excesses, and trashed hotel room, barely register with the locals.
Yet, for all that, there is real emotional resonance at work here that plays into the action. Aldous ex (Rose Byrne) who hasnt gown up, but has moved on taking Aldous heart with her. His sleazy father (Colm Meany) still resentful of not being allowed to live his life through his son, his over-accessorized mother (Helen Mirren) whose disinterested nurturing is emotional abandonment. Brand rises to the occasion without missing a beat and so does Hill during the films inevitable reckoning phase. That potentially fatal plot turn, coming as it does after so much slapstick, works because of the subtle set-ups sprinkled through the story so that rather than buzz-kill, its the allegorical and welcome hangover of a three-day binge and Aldous hitting bottom and Aaron running out of options.
Funny, it turns out, is even better framed with the bittersweet hollowness of excess and of success without passion that Stoller posits. For a comedy, and a wildly funny one, GET HIM TO THE GREEK dares to go to some very dark places and does so without losing its absurdist bite.
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