Grade: B+
Bottom Line: Expect your usual dosage of dick jokes and sexual conundrums from Get Him to the Greek — and a few heartbreaking moments in between.
Hats off to the Apatow bandwagon, which has scored yet again with another bro-mantic comedy. You know, the kind about man-boys flailing around en route to becoming better man-boys; a twisted version of the altogether too cliche hero’s journey. These geek-centric, pop-savvy and crude comedic movies have made their mark in the 21st century, resonating with a generation of young men who have no idea how to grow up.
Get Him to the Greek features another all-star comedic cast, including Jonah Hill, Russell Brand (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Sean Combs (a.k.a. P. Diddy). The cast owns every single punchline they deliver. Maybe that’s because their characters’ personalities are somewhat in line with those of the actors themselves.
Greek takes an uncut look behind-the-scenes at the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of the music industry. Aaron Green, a fresh-eyed music buff, proposes to his a-hole record executive boss, Sergio (P.Diddy), a music event to revive their failing music label. The plan? To get British chart-topping rock star Aldous Snow to perform at the L.A. Greek Theater in celebration of his 10-year anniversary show at the same venue. Simple enough.
Problem is, Aldous Snow epitomizes the curse, “The higher you rise, the harder you fall.” Snow has plummeted off the records since his last flop, “African Child,” dubbed by the TV stations to be “the worst thing for Africa since apartheid,” and coming “third after war and famine.” With that, Snow turns to drugs and sex to numb the pain of a recent break-up, and now looks like he has never walked a step sober in his life.
Aaron, himself broken up with a girl who makes him feel like a submissive 1950s housewives, has to put everything else aside. He has exactly 3 days, 72 hours, to bring Aldous Snow from London to the Greek theater in L.A.
With a smile that Sergio likens to “an 8-year-old who just discovered a boner,” Aaron sets off to meet his rock idol with the hopes of resurrecting Snow’s career. They say you should never meet your heroes because they let you down, and Aaron discovers just that – that and Aldous’ womanizing, happy pill-popping lifestyle. Aldous is a guy who believes that ‘monogamy means you can sleep with other people but you have to tell your partner’ – imagine that.
Predictably, Aaron acts like a moral compass gone awry. He does everything in his power to get Aldous back on schedule, even if it means physically turning drunken sluts’ mouths away from Aldous’, downing all the liquor and puffing away on joints with more ingredients than a chemical lab himself.
An interesting discovery is that Brand, who plays Aldous Snow, sings the movie’s original songs. If his acting stint goes to bust, Brand could always consider a music career. Alternatively, P. Diddy, who came away as one of the best parts of the movie, could do more acting stints on the side of his music business.
Surprisingly, besides getting more than your money’s worth of dick jokes, sexual conundrums and other forms of guy humor, Greek delivers a refreshing perspective on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. In between laughs, there are some heartwarming moments that let you identify with Aldous, who has his own set of daddy issues and tumultuous relationships. Greek also implies that the real culprits to rock stars’ alternative lifestyles are the music industries, who pushed them to their pill-popping, skull-numbing ways.