Review: Get Him To The Greek

jason kundrath loans us a review of Get Him To The Greek …

Last night was crazy. Bonkers. Bananas.

I made some new friends, and we went bar hopping. I got pretty severely wasted. Drugs were involved.

We went to a strip club. And I had sex in a bathroom with some beautiful British blonde I had just met. It was kind of hot. But mostly awkward and funny.

I had lots of other adventures, too. And my wife was sitting next to me the entire time. And the whole experience only cost us $27 at the Garden State Plaza AMC Theater in Elizabeth, N.J.

In other words, we saw Get Him To The Greek last night. It is and R-rated, raucous romp that delivers big laughs and plenty of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

The film follows the young, earnest record label employee Aaron Greenberg (the lovable tub Jonah Hill) who shows up to work one day to find he has been charged with the task of fetching his idol, British rocker Aldous Snow (the brilliant Russell Brand) from London and getting him back to the Greek Theater in L.A. for a massive concert.

But before he takes off for London, however, we are given a few glimpses into Greenberg’s relationship with his live-in girlfriend Daphne (Elisabeth Moss), and it’s mostly sexless and a little bit sad. She is a doctor who works opposite hours and is climbing into bed in her dirty scrubs when he goes off to work. When they have a few hours to spend together, she is just dying to watch Gossip Girl. He suggests they go see the Mars Volta. She doesn’t know who they are. Etc., etc.

When he visits her hospital to excitedly tell her about his impending flight to London, she also has some news. She is waiting on a residency at a great hospital in Seattle. “There’s lots of great music stuff in Seattle,” she reassures him. “Nirvana!… Nirvana came from Seattle, right?” This leads to some hysterical dialogue and, of course, a fight that ends with the two of them taking a break. This is the perfect set up to his intercontinental descent into debauchery.

Russell Brand is totally believable as a drug-addled, obnoxious, hyper-sexual, magnetic rock star. This is because he is all of these things. In reality, he is currently sober, but he has been addicted to heroin. And though he’s now engaged to Katy Perry, he boasts of having bedded thousands. And while he’s not a household name in America yet, this movie could change that.

As the battery of the film, Brand’s performance is captivating, riotous and quite deep in places. Aldous is the psychological center of the film: a rock star given to excess, struggling with the possibility his best days are behind him, surrounded by people but perpetually lonely. The audience stands with Greenberg as he struggles to contain this force of nature. As he gives into Aldous’ charms, so do we. And thanks to the miracle of movies, we don’t have to experience the painful hangovers, or the puke on our lapel.

Things do dip into semi-serious territory in the third act with mixed results, but throughout it all, the chemistry between Hill and Brand never loses steam, making this another winning Apatow production.

[This review was brought to B&B by Jason Kundrath … please subscribe to his blog: Smashing The Block]