Get Him to the Greek

 

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elizabeth Moss, Sean Combs, Colm Meaney
Running Time: 109 min.
Rating: R

★★ 1/2 (★★★★)

Russell Brand's hedonistic, self-destructive rocker Aldous Snow from 2008's mostly forgettable Forgetting Sarah Marshall probably wouldn't top my list of supporting comic characters I'd like to see spun off into their own film. That he's joined again by Jonah Hill still doesn't do much to raise my excitement level, at least on paper.  On the bright side, neither of them were close to being the most annoying aspect of that film, or even its most unlikable character so thankfully Get Him to the Greek isn't a direct sequel to that. Here again, both actors are far from the problem and do a terrific job fleshing out parts that should have propelled a great comedy. At times it shows glimpses that it could be, but despite being a slightly smarter effort than Sarah Marshall and considerably more ambitious, it suffers from nearly the same exact problem that film had: A tonally awkward mix of comedy and drama. One second this film's a riff on celebrity pop culture, only to turn around the next and actually try to make some kind of serious social commentary on it.  It all comes to a head in a messy third act where you can literally sense two separate movies fighting for onscreen dominance, with neither winning side winning and the audience suffering slightly for having endured the battle. Because of this, and a tired satirical target, it's only sporadically amusing. There are some bright spots but just too much is thrown together in a haphazard way for it to be considered a comedic success.

This time around, instead of playing an obsessive resort employee Hill is Aaron Green, an entry-level talent scout for a major recording company that's rapidly losing money. When his boss, egotistical Segio Roma (a very funny Sean "P. Diddy" Combs) needs a game-changing idea, Aaron comes up with the idea of Aldous Snow (Brand) and his band Infant Sorrow playing a show at L.A.'s famed Greek Theater commemorating the tenth anniversary of their most famous concert. Now Aaron has to travel to the U.K. and find a way to get him there, which is more difficult than necessary considering the hard-partying Snow's 'round-the-clock schedule of sex and drugs. That's only escalated by the depression surrounding his recent break-up with longtime girlfriend, pop star Jackie Q. (Rose Byrne), and his shaky relationship with his estranged father (Colm Meaney). As a longtime fan, Aaron's investment is also personal as he tries to repair the career of a faded rock star who's last single, the politically incorrect and offensive "African Child," was blasted by music critics as the "worst thing to happen to Africa since the apartheid." He also has a relationship problem of his own with a rift growing between him and his overworked live-in girlfriend, Daphne (Mad Men's Elizabeth Moss) who he rarely gets to spend any time with because of her busy schedule.

This entire premise is about as thin as it gets but I was surprised just how much mileage writer/director Nicholas Stoller gets out of it. Maybe too much.  He takes a big risk trying to spoof something that's already a spoof of itself and choosing a starring actor in Brand who's essentially portraying a character indistinguishable from whom we perceive him to be as a celebrity. Try as you might to avoid it, this guy (and many other celebrities like him) are shoved in our faces everyday no matter what channel you flip to or magazine you read and it's puzzling to think why anyone would want to see a comedy revolving around a subject already overexposed to death as it is. This is one of those cases where you have a timely concept but also a stale one since there's no way to possibly approach it from a fresh angle.  And as ridiculous as the Aldous Snow songs and videos are, they're still much less ridiculous than a lot of the pop/rock stuff that's being put out today and probably of higher quality, so what's this spoofing exactly? They're making a joke out of something that's already a big mockery and didn't need much help to begin with.  Far from the most inspired, original idea for a comedy, for a while it at least knows enough not to take itself too seriously, which is when it works best.

The biggest mistake comes when it stops goofing around and actually asks us to feel sorry for Brand's character. This continues the tiresome trend in all these Apatow-produced comedies of trying to teach moral lessons about guys having to grow up and take responsibility. It was much more tolerable in films like Role Models and I Love You, Man which never lost sight of their mission to provide laughs and knew not to take its message seriously. But as he already proved with Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Stoller can't juggle tone at at all so every crude joke seems to be followed by semi-serious scene trying to apologize for it. By the last third of the movie everything completely flies off the rails and turns into a misguided mish-mash of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Almost Famous, even going so far as to crib a scene directly from the latter. The shame is whether they're just playing variations on their own personalities or not, Brand and Hill make a great comedy team and do gel really well together on screen, with Brand proving he's capable of going to darker, more interesting places as an actor if he's called on to do it. This shouldn't have been that time and requests for us to feel any kind of sympathy for such a flimsy, one-dimensional character should have been off-limits. As surprisingly good as Brand is here, he can't be expected to work miracles or act in two entirely different movies at once. Rose Byrne is frighteningly dead-on as his pop star girlfriend but she's another character who suffers in the laughs department because she actually seems respectable compared to current talentless music stars making headlines. Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth Moss is likable and funny as Aaron's girlfriend but Stoller's script undercuts her efforts with a creative decision in the third act so ill-conceived and tonally out of place I had to check and make sure I was still watching the same movie.

At only 109 minutes the film feels overlong, as if many of the jokes were simply repeated to stretch out the running time (How many times do we really need to see Jonah Hill drunk and puking?) Scarier still, when it was over I discovered I actually viewed the theatrical version, not the EXTENDED Unrated director's cut. What more could possibly added to something like this? Why would you want to add anything? And therein lies the problem. So many of these comedies are just too ambitious, trying to do a million things at once when just providing some laughs is good enough. The script does occasionally cut loose and do that really well  (particularly during a "Today Show" sequence and a bad drug trip in Vegas involving Diddy's character) but Stoller's desire to "say something" is always annoyingly present, ready to intrude. But even as messy and unfocused as Get Him to the Greek is, it's still slightly better than Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I'd rather see a likable comedy fail to work as a drama than a depressing drama posing as a comedy.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Jason Segal, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Bill Hader, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill
Running Time: 111 min.
Rating: R

**1/2 (out of ****)

When Forgetting Sarah Marshall was released in theaters 5 months ago I couldn’t wait to see it. At least that was until nearly everyone who did wouldn’t stop telling me how awesome Mila Kunis was, while Kristen Bell “does what she can” with a one-dimensional bitch character. There’s no sense hiding it: Everyone knows Bell is really the only reason I wanted to see the film. But the more I heard about her role and how she’s used the more my interest started to wane. It went from a movie I desperately wanted to see to figuring it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I waited until it hit DVD. So after falling off my radar until recently I was ready to approach the film with what can best be described as cautious optimism. Unfortunately that optimism ended up being false not only because what I heard about Bell’s role was true, but because that’s just one of the film’s many troubles.

The major problem that plagues Forgetting Sarah Marshall is nearly the exact same one that I thought sunk last year’s other overrated Judd Apatow-branded project, Knocked Up. It takes a realistic, depressing situation and attempts to make it funny, struggling the whole way to find the right tone. I don’t know about you but where I come from a good, honest guy being cruelly dumped by his impossibly hot TV star girlfriend isn’t funny. It’s tragic. No more hilarious than, say, an unwanted pregnancy.

What makes this slightly better (or less worse) than Knocked Up is that the script goes to more interesting places emotionally, which turns it into a compelling drama at times. It’s not a comedy, despite what you’ve heard. Richard Roeper, who isn’t exactly known as a quote whore, declared it “One of the funniest damn movies I’ve ever seen!” I’d love to ask him what he found so funny because I hardly laughed at all. I want to recommend the film for being smart and realistic about relationships while containing worthy performances, but precisely because of those reasons it doesn’t work.
Peter Bretter (How I Met Your Mother’s Jason Segal) is the successful music composer of a hit CSI-like show, Crime Scene, which stars his girlfriend of 5 years, Sarah Marshall (Bell), for whom his world revolves around. He comes out the shower to find her in his apartment ready to dump him and insists on taking the news naked, which is supposed to be hilarious. Why? I guess because he has a penis. It’s just a gross stunt done purely for shock value so the film can be promoted with a bunch of controversial red-band trailers. It would have been much funnier if, against everyone’s expectations, she delivered deliver the traumatic news naked to ease his pain and embarrassment. It would also force me to give the film an automatic 4 stars. After Peter indulges in sex with as many random women as he can in a failed attempt to get over her, his stepbrother Bryan (an unfunny Bill Hader) suggests he get away to a luxurious Hawaiian resort to clear his mind. It’s there where he bumps into Sarah and her new boyfriend, narcissistic British rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).

There’s a scene early on that’s indicative of this movie’s problems. When Sarah asked Peter what he’s doing there his response is that he came to murder her. I laughed at the line, not because it was funny, but because that event wouldn’t be so far-fetched given the film’s wildly uneven tone. Much of the first half of the picture we spend with Peter moping and crying his eyes out, all while being consoled by an annoying group of characters providing “comic relief," each one seemingly unfunnier than the next. In choosing which aspect of the film works least, this wins hands down. Remind me never to stay at this resort.

I know everyone loves Paul Rudd but as a laid-back surfer instructor he gets no laughs at all. Slightly better (but not much) is Jonah Hill making his requisite Apatow appearance as a waiter obsessed with Aldous Snow. Both are bad, but not nearly as bad as 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer portraying an annoying newlywed who can’t satisfy his wife’s voracious sexual appetite. All of them come off as standard screenwriting inventions rather than real people, surprising given all characters in any Apatow-produced film are usually too real for their own good.

When Peter starts dating the lovely hotel receptionist Rachel (Kunis) the film improves significantly. For the most part, everyone was right about Kunis. She brightens up what could previously be considered a dark comedy, although Segal’s script makes poor choices that prevent us from falling in love with her like we should, such as giving her a gang-banger boyfriend and a sub-plot involving a topless photo. Both feel as if they were transplanted from a lesser film. At times it’s tough to tell how much of Segal’s script did work on paper and what can be blamed on poor staging from former Undeclared writer Nicholas Stoller, making his directorial debut.

The battle that unfolds between Peter and Sarah is deep and takes unexpected detours, but they’re dramatic rather than comedic. Especially when characters are lying in bed hurling hurtful insults at one another. I felt like I was watching Mike Nichols’ Closer instead of a romantic comedy. Some of Aldous’ antics were amusing and a sub-plot involving Peter’s Dracula musical starring puppets was inventive and got some giggles out of me, but I’d still stop short in labeling any of it “hilarious.” I also hurts when the studio decides to give the best scenes away in trailers and commercials. Supposedly there’s a spin off in the works focusing on Brand’s rock star and I’m not opposed to the idea because he looked like the only actor in this who was really having fun. Jason Segal reminds me a lot of his former Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared castmate Seth Rogen in that he’s a really likable leading man in a goofy down-to-Earth way. He makes it look easy and can definitely carry a movie. I just wish he were in a better one.

A crisis develops with Sarah toward the third act and the film actually has the nerve to ask us to feel sorry for her. Those who said Bell was saddled with a one-dimensional bitch character were being kind. If another actress were playing her she probably would have come across as pure evil incarnate. What's strange is the more the script tries to invest Sarah with depth and give an explanation for her behavior the more detestable she becomes. Bell tries her heart out and does a great job with the thankless part she’s been handed but it’s an uphill battle no actress should be asked to fight. What’s worse though, is that the movie slides in all these details that vaguely (and sometimes very directly) reference Bell’s career so many viewers will walk away thinking she’s playing herself, especially given the film's nasty tone. But it could also be considered a testament to how well Bell played her that anyone would think that.

I don’t pretend to represent the views of Kristen Bell fans worldwide and realize the film isn’t supposed to be a showcase for her, but she deserves better. Why did Segal have to write Sarah as an inhuman ice queen? It's bad for Bell, but worse for the story. Of course, Kunis is going to come out smelling like roses because she didn’t have to pull off the thankless part. While I liked Kunis, her performance is far from a revelation, as some have suggested, and there's no doubt in my mind that Bell could have played it better if put in the same comfy position.

I don’t know what’s going on with these Apatow produced or directed projects anymore. It seems whenever his movies try to mix raunchy, vulgar humor with emotional pathos all sorts of issues with tone starts to rear its head. Maybe the solution is to pick one or the other. Having a first time director on the job probably didn’t help because this material would be hard to get a handle on even for a seasoned pro. But it doesn’t matter what I say. Everyone will love this movie just like they loved Knocked Up and think I’m orbiting another planet. And just like that film, I’ve been telling anyone willing to listen just how frustrated I am that I didn’t like this.
You have no idea how hard it is for me to bash this film, especially the same week I’m forced to recommend a George Clooney sports comedy. It doesn't get much worse than that. Bell will be fine after this, even if it may take me much longer to recover. And as depressing as that seems, it still isn’t as depressing as the situation presented in this movie. When one of Sarah Marshall’s questionable film choices is mocked in the movie it made me wonder whether Sarah Marshall would have taken the role of Sarah Marshall. I cared about everyone in the story but found little to laugh at. It’s great that romantic comedies are now smarter and more observant, but somewhere along the way Forgetting Sarah Marshall forgot it also has to be funny.