Review: Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek is helmed by Nicholas Stoller as a follow-up to his directorial debut with Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A sequel of sorts it focuses on the character of Aldous Snow as played by the eccentric Russell Brand. Unfortunately the movie takes on a completely different tone than FSM becoming more of an in-your-face comedy and in doing so bypasses the delivery of a genuine story and enjoyable characters.

Jonah Hill takes on the lead role of Aaron Green, a record company intern assigned with the task of guiding Aldous Snow (Brand) through a series of events leading up to a concert at the Greek Theater. Of course nothing goes smoothly along the way as Snow makes it a difficult task every step of the way.

Not exactly a sequel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall it would probably be better described as a spin-off years later. The Aldous Snow character is carried over from FSM however for the most part I didn’t actually feel like it was the same guy despite possessing the obvious mannerisms. Maybe that could be cited as due to the passage of time being accounted for in the movie or just that having the story focus on him instead of being a side-character was too much screen time and exposed flaws.

What may be confusing to some, that Jonah Hill’s character is not the same one he played in FSM, didn’t end up bothering me. Like with the Snow character I didn’t end up associating much about this movie with FSM. I did like the references made back to that movie but there were only two of them that I noticed and I had hoped for more than that.

The pacing was all over the place and really stood out as an issue to me. There were some serious dead spots where all of the sudden things would inexplicably try and go serious or sentimental. Given that there was no emotional attachment to a single character all of these scenes fell completely flat. They just didn’t flow within the context of the high energy comedic scenes. At times the transitions between scenes just felt really unnatural jumping from one spot to another lacking a natural flow and progression was difficult to follow.

The characters were simply unlikeable. Either they were stupid, exaggerated, annoying, jerks, unrelatable, or some combination of those. I didn’t care what happened to any of them and that is a rare feeling to have. That explains why those times where they tried to go sentimental never clicked. I didn’t buy into anything that was happening as real instead I just felt as though I was being taken on a ride. While that can be enjoyable in its own right it just didn’t work here.

Who steals the show? Surprisingly P. Diddy came away as the best part of the movie. While I didn’t particularly care about the character he provided some of the best laughs through his energy and voice. It was impossible not to associate the character with P. Diddy and that had me contemplating throughout the comedic chops that he was putting on display.

Part of my general feel on the movie may have been hampered by poor presentation at the theater, where the sound was low and muffled making it difficult to hear some of the dialogue. I don’t think it would have made much of a difference if the presentation had been ideal, however I do feel that affected my evaluation of the movie and thought it was worth mentioning.

Get Him to the Greek was a bad movie that admittedly did have some moments that were quite funny. Its poor pacing, disjointed nature, and unlikeable characters just overshadowed those funny moments. It is definitely a movie that will be polarizing and is completely lacking any of the charm that many of the successful R rated comedies of the last few years. That in your face comedy may work for some but it won’t for those who have grown accustomed to those much more well rounded comedies.

Rating:

Get Him to the Greek opens on June 4th.