Saturday, June 5, 2010

Box Office Review – Get Him To The Greek



Get Him To The Greek is a spin-off of the 2008 movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The connection, for those who don't know is Russell Brand's character Aldous Snow. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall Aldous Snow is a supporting character. In Get Him To The Greek he is the full-fledged main character. Well, he shares the main character role with Jonah Hill. In Get Him To The Greek Hill plays Aaron Green an intern at a record company who is given the job of getting Aldous Snow from the UK to the Greek theatre in Los Angeles. Along the way the two get in too many ridiculous situations. This movie is as good as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, even though it does lose a lot of its humour half way through.

This loss of humour is no way the fault of the actors. Russell Brand is able to slip right back into the Aldous Snow character and the opening music video African Child is even better than the music video from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jonah Hill is great as the intern trying to further his career as well as trying to maintain the relationship with his girlfriend Daphne (played by Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss). Sean Combs is surprisingly not that bad as the crazy record exec Sergio Roma. His scene in Las Vegas is very funny. The best performance though is by Rose Byrne who plays Aldous Snow's lady love, pop Princess Jackie Q. Byrne is known mostly for her roles in more serious films like 28 Weeks Later and Knowing, but she is still able to steal the movie from established comedians. The character Jackie Q is basically the female Aldous Snow. She is way over the top in everything she does and Byrne simply nailed the performance. Jackie Q is enough of a reason to go see Get Him To The Greek.

That's the thing with this movie. There is so much going for it that even though the laughs stop coming midway through, it is in no way a bad movie. It is hard to think of a recent comedy that doesn't suffer from this problem. Whether the joke that the movie is based on gets over used (Hot Tub Time Machine), or the comedy is so uninspired that half an hour in any sympathy the audience has towards the film runs out (Cop Out). This is a problem that is almost impossible to avoid. Get Him To The Greek does try hard to avoid this, but the crazy partying joke gets a bit tired. Also the movie gets serious near the end of the movie and this didn't work for me. There is a scene between Aldous, Aaron, and Daphne that is weird and ridiculous.

The first time I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall I felt the same way I do about Get Him To The Greek. It made me laugh, but there is a lot that I didn't like. After a few watches of Sarah Marshall I liked the movie a lot more. I have a feeling that this will be the same with Get Him To The Greek.

A Good Banana


No comments:

Post a Comment