Pinnacle records has the perfect plan to get their sinking company back on track: a comeback concert in LA featuring Aldous Snow, a fading rockstar who has dropped off the radar in recent years. Re...
Get Him To The Greek sings through its unfocused plot quicker than a Metallica song. The British eccentric behaviour of the leather-coated Brand and the American lifestyle of the fatigued Hill was an odd combination to say the least. Two types of humour that are regrettably polar opposites from each other. Explicit "London, ennit" expletives against monotonous lines of musically inclined dialogue unfortunately just doesn't work, further cementing the juxtaposing, unfocused and ill-fated tones that Stoller explored. Perhaps we shouldn't forget about Sarah Marshall after all. Tasked in bringing the rock star Aldous Snow to the Greek Theatre in LA, a wannabe music manager must adjust to the rock'n'roll lifestyle in just 72 hours.
I'm unable to score this highly for one simple reason. Depicting male sexual assault at the hands of a female for the sake of laughs is highly insensitive and just plain wrong. Imagine if the genders were swapped. It's not a joking matter, whatever the circumstance. Now that's out of the way, as mentioned before the two styles of humour failed to strum any guitars or bang any drums right from the offset, so the majority of laughs were diminished pretty early on.
The unlikely bromance between Hill and Brand failed to generate any electricity, just simply a means to showcase an onslaught of drugs, alcohol and sex to a peer pressured individual for the sake of his career. Brand was either too exhausting when conveying jokes or too unnaturally restrained to allow Hill to have his say, as if watching two different characters. And when rap titan P Diddy is funnier than the entirety of comedic actors, you just know something's not right (he was surprisingly effective). As was the rest of the supporting cast, including Byrne and Moss. The plot however held no substance, comprising of montages that showcased Hill's vomiting abilities. The tone bravely became darker in the conclusive third act, tackling depression and loneliness, yet it abruptly disrupted the characters and the "humour". Whilst I appreciate the exploration, it was far too thin to be anything but inconsistent.
Pretty much surmising the film. An inconsistent comedy that, whilst displayed talent from its supporting cast, predictably tarnished the lead characters by forcibly shoving the sentiment "the rock'n'roll lifestyle isn't for everyone" in our face and including a inconceivably sour sexual assault scene. By the end, you won't care if that make it to the Greek or not. All you will care about, is how Aldous thought "African Child" was a good idea...
