I’m gonna mix things up a little bit today.  I’m going to start with my complaints about the movie, because I really only have one and it’s so trivial I’d rather just get it out of the way.  As you probably are aware, Get Him To The Greek stars Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, the frontman for fictional rock band, Infant Sorrow.  My one big issue lies in the fact that the filmmakers have no idea what kind of band Infant Sorrow is supposed to be.

In Forgetting Sarah Marshall they were posited as a slightly edgier U2, and that continues into GHTTG in the form of bloated, misguided anthem, African Child, but then they get to the Today Show and they play a different song (called The Clap, which, whatever) and sudddenly they’re The Buzzcocks.  Then later, once they (spoiler) get to the Greek, they turn into My Chemical Romance.  Does this ruin the movie?  Not at all, but I found it distracting enough to warrant a mention.  It is my blog, after all.

Musical inconsistencies aside, Get Him To The Greek is actually an enjoyable (if inconsequential) followup to Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Outside of a quick appearance from Sarah Marshall herself (who is still stuck doing ridiculous television), Aldous Snow is the only returning character, and he’s back in fine form.  Rather than being the holier-than-thou lothario that he was in FSM, now he’s a re-debauched lothario, but with a backstory that brings it into focus; whether or not that was necessary, I’ll leave up to you.  All I know is, Russell Brand was clearly having a ball revisiting this character (even though it seems to basically just be the way he naturally is).

Jonah Hill stars along with Brand, playing a different character than the one he played in Sarah Marshall (I thought they would make some meta joke about that, but no dice).  He’s an intern at a record company that needs big ideas because of the poor economy (something tells me they would have needed big ideas regardless, the economy just happened to present itself as a viable excuse).  Hill suggests posing a comeback for Snow who’s been rather unheard-from since the disastrous African Child.  Record executive Sergio (Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, which is quite fun to type) loves the idea and sends Hill to London to pick up Brand and from there it’s just a series of escalating hijinx.

None of those hijinx are terribly crucial to the plot, at least not in a way that they couldn’t be swapped out for something else.  Just like how The Hangover can be boiled down to “Guys lose groom, must find him,” Greek boils down to “Hill and Brand must get to LA, Brand makes things tricky.”  There is an attempt at pathos and a redemption for Snow, which is necessary to ground the story a little bit, and fortunately it doesn’t get in the way of what we came for, the shenanigans (also fun to type).

The movie has a happy ending (shocker) and despite being 109 minutes long, it has the sense to keep moving, and as such it breezes by effortlessly.  There’s nothing terribly surprising about  Get Him To The Greek, but that doesn’t stop it from being some nice, frothy entertainment.  If you enjoyed Brand in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you’ll probably enjoy him here as well.

P.S. The soundtrack is pretty awesome, too.

Posted under Kyle's Adventures in Pop Culture