Custom and chaos

There exist certain chasms between the movie-going experiences of critics and the general public. Not least among these is what I refer to as the "reviewer's malady," the deleterious effects on one's point of view resulting from being exposed to an endless stream of bad movies. This sickness of soul takes two forms: a tendency for critics to take shots at easy targets (think Tom Cruise in his latest and least financially successful summer blockbuster, Knight and Day), and the tendency to over-praise the mediocre after a particularly long string of clunkers in the cinemas. The largely positive response from the critical press to Get Him to the Greek is an example of the latter phenomena if ever there was one.

It's true that the comedies exposed to audiences of late have been particularly putrescent, and also that director Nicholas Stoller's spin-off of 2007's Forgetting Sarah Marshall is not without redeeming moments, but it's far from laudable, consisting as it does primarily of gross-out jokes and the intoxicant-induced orgiastic excesses of a vapid celebrity and a bitchy, bloated sycophant.      

The production triumvirate of Stoller, Judd Apatow and Jason Segel has reprised the comic spectacle that is Russell Brand as aging addict and rock star Aldous Snow with a farcical and satirical look at popular culture and the music business. Love the film or hate it (or as seems more appropriate still, ignore it), Brand is sharp and amusing in what amounts to a feature-length roast of his former public persona.

Our tale begins with a montage of images and video clips featuring the implosion of Snow's career and personal life and his eventual dips into insobriety. Enter Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), a pathetic cog in the music empire of mogul Sergio Roma (Sean "P. Diddy" Combs). Green's existence is a dreary one, and his personal life amounts to so many ships passing in the figurative night due to the fact that his girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) is a slave to the grind as a medical intern. In a moment of inspiration, Green hits on the idea of launching a comeback for Snow in the form of a live concert at the Greek Theatre, where the star held an enormously successful concert (and subsequent recording) exactly one decade before.

After an emasculating argument with his girlfriend, Green ships off for London to retrieve the besotted icon and escort him to his destination (hence the title). Snow proves unmanageable and tempts (or drags) young Green through a series of debauches of Dionysian proportions. The pair get wasted, miss connections and eventually confront their personal demons and angry significant others along the way to their destination.

All's well that ends well, and rest assured it does. That this intermittently whimsical comedy never really threatens anything like a buzz kill is hardly a spoiler. Indeed, it is the middle-of-the-road, lowbrow aspirations of the film that bleed it of any urgency or sustainable humor. Get Him to the Greek may be better than a great deal of the dreck currently in circulation (The Rebound, Sex and the City 2, Killers, etc.), but that doesn't make it good.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com