The Chocolate Review: Get Him to The Greek

Get Him To The Greek
2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall was one of those movies we didn’t want to see from the jump. Nothing about the previews, actors or premise said “see this movie!” and so… we didn’t. It wasn’t until a friend of ours happened to pop in the movie one evening that we discovered the endless, hilarity that film had to offer. In fact, it quickly became one of Crystal Rose’s favorite comedies. Nicholas Stoller’s Get Him To The Greek, a semi-sequel to Marshall, was just as much of a comic surprise.

The film follows Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), a low level intern at Pinnacle Records who after suggesting that the company boost sales by having an Aldous Snow anniversary concert, travels to London at the demand of his fanatical boss, Sergio (Sean “P Diddy” Combs). Aaron’s mission? To retrieve Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), the world’s most obnoxious, out of control rock star and get him to the Greek Theatre by opening night. This is seemingly an easy task until Aaron discovers that Snow is far more out of control than he ever expected. And the clock is ticking.

We'll start by saying that Russell Brand saved this film from being an epic let down. The film started off a bit bland but quickly moved into momentum. Not everybody is of taste with Russel Brand’s interpretation of humor. Crystal Rose absolutely adores it. Then there’s Ekemini who loved it so much she fell asleep twenty minutes into the film. Greek isn’t The Hangover kind of funny, it’s Superbad/Old School kind of funny. If that's not your taste, this one may not be either. To be honest Jonah Hill had little to nothing to do with any on screen hilarity. He’s kind of like a puppet, really. When given the right situations and a good director, he can fake it like a pro. But we’ll get to him later.

Greek didn't have us laughing non stop but when we did laughed, we laughed hard. The tall, mantis like Russell Brand is loud, abrupt and subtly hilarious. His matter of fact delivery of offensive banter is what we’ve come to expect (and love) and his portrayal of Aldous Snow is that much more believable because of it. We have his larger than life persona to thank for the success of this film’s entertainment value. Clearly, without him Get Him To The Greek would not have been a funny movie at all. In fact it might have been an unbearable bore. Brand is the amusing, comedic ying to Jonah Hill’s less than glorious yang. Comedy duos are normally supposed to feed off of one another. But in this comedy duo it seemed like Hill was eating everything Brand would feed. And since we’re on that topic…

Jonah Hill, a relatively recent movie star, has clearly been enjoying the fruits of his labor. And the meats. And the sugars. And the bad carbohydrates. We hate to mention it but in an age when we over scrutinize women for gaining a single pound, we think it’s time we focus on a man for a change. All we’re saying is that instead of getting Brand to the Greek someone should have been worrying about getting Hill to the gym.

Seeing Jonah’s attempt at physical comedy was reminiscent of Farley. Only Hill lacks the freakish agility that made Farley’s overweight antics comical. On screen he’s forced and clumsy. Farley made us laugh. Hill makes us worry…about the strength of his heart. But now we’re just being mean. Back to the actual review of the movie.

P Diddy just showed up to play a more interesting, douche bag version of himself. After firing off jokes about black kids and Jordans and why white people shouldn’t be able to out run him because he’s black- the race jokes got old. But that’s not even the worst of it . All we’ll say is that if you’re sensitive about race, you’ll be uncomfortable for the entire opening scene of the movie. You’ll chuckle. But you’ll be uncomfortable.

Anyway, for what its worth the film was a pretty decent spin off that ended up being better than we thought it would be. It even snuck in a deeply moving morale to the story that’ll actually touch your heart. If you’re looking for a good laugh check this one out. If you didn’t like Apatow’s last 5 films: stay home. Same party, different DJ.

Overall, Get Him To The Greek delivers in the laugh department and that’s about it. You’ll find yourself waiting for something to happen, and you’ll probably get bored a few times but in our opinion, it pays off. It’s intermittent flashes of comedic absurdity is peppered with believable moments of emotion. Not many, but enough. We recommend viewing Forgetting Sarah Marshall before watching Greek. You might have a better appreciation (and understanding) of who Aldous Snow is. That way when you see his drug induced, preposterous life rollercoaster into a nose dive, you’ll care. And hopefully laugh too.

The Chocolate Review gives Get Him To The Greek 3 out of 5 stars for the following reasons:

• Sneaking a morale in there
• Not as good as we hoped for, but good enough
• Long scenes with unexplained humor
• Several funny moments