Get Him to the Greek starts out with what may be the most hilarious music video ever filmed. From the credits, we know exactly what this movie is going to set out to do. In the vein of other R-rated comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which spun off Greek), Knocked Up, and The Hangover, Get Him to the Greek is a movie that has no qualms about crossing into vulgar, gross-out comedy territory. It does so gleefully, and yet it never feels like it's falling back on that to force out a few laughs. Those jokes all fit naturally into this story, and what elevates the material here is its sense of adventure. Just when you think this movie is about to sputter to the finish and end in a completely predictable fashion, it throws something into the mix that most other comedies would have either left out entirely, or completely botched. That adventurous spirit and willingness to take the joke a step further is what makes this movie gasp-inducing funny, but what really makes this movie stand above other comedies is its heart.
Get Him to the Greek focuses on Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), an idealistic low-level talent scout at Pinnacle Records. His boss, Sergio Roma (Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs), calls a meeting to try to come up with ideas to help Pinnacle stop losing so much money. Aaron suggests having washed-up, drugged-out British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) hold a 10-year anniversary concert at the Greek Theater, which he figures could make the company money in broadcasting rights, ticket sales, re-mastering of his albums, etc. He is initially laughed out of the room, but after a month or so, he receives a call from Sergio that tells him that Snow has agreed to do the concert, and that Aaron has to fly to London to get him to the Today Show in New York, then to the Greek Theater in less than 72-hours. There's a few issues with this. As I mentioned, Snow is off the wagon after his divorce from British pop-star Jackie Q (Rose Byrne). Also affecting Aaron's judgment is his borderline hero worship of Snow, and his suddenly rocky relationship with his girlfriend, Daphne (Elisabeth Moss)
This movie has a sort of frantic energy to it that is almost exhausting. Jokes are fired quickly and often, the characters rush from one point to another, and there are times where the movie feels like it's struggling to contain everything happening within it. In a sense, we kind of feel the same way that Aaron does as things unfold in front of us. His is a helpless situation. No one, including himself, is going to stand up to the famous and completely unhinged rock star. And he's not supposed to. Sergio instructs him rather strictly to coddle him, but make sure he arrives sober (but not TOO sober). The film keeps that pace and doesn't once deviate from it. Even when things slow down a bit towards the end, it feels more like a breather than anything else. It's worth noting that Combs completely steals this movie in every single scene that he's in. He plays Sergio with a natural comedic timing. Sergio is completely insane, and moreover, we believe it. He's not over the top save for one scene, and his role easily could have turned out that way. His character has the movie's most memorable lines in the movies, and I really got the sense that this was kind of the way that an eccentric label owner would act. Certainly one that has been in the business long enough to understand what makes rock stars tick.
I mentioned that this movie has a big heart, and that's because at its core, it's a movie about relationships. The relationship between Aaron and Aldous is a fascinating one. Snow starts out as Aaron's idol and almost as his mentor, but by the end of the movie their roles have completely reversed. Snow becomes more desperate of a character as the movie progresses, and eventually he realizes that the only person that he has to rely on at all is Aaron. Something that I really didn't expect was how convincing the relationship between Aaron and Daphne would be. The movie downplays it through most of the middle of the film, but during the opening scenes of the movie, and even more so at the end, we get a pretty good glimpse at Aaron's life with her. And he has it pretty good. Sure, she wants to uproot them to Seattle which would force him to switch jobs, but beyond that we get the sense that their relationship is very, very strong. Despite the fact that they work completely different shifts and sometimes just see each other in passing, they are very much in love and they carry on what is, I have to say, one of the more believable relationships I've seen on the screen in a very long time. Their relationship is put through one of the craziest tests any relationship will ever have to pass towards the end of the movie, and while it may have felt out of place for some (I really, really don't want to spoil it), I have to praise it for actually going through with it. It may not have been what the movie is about, but I have to give Get Him to the Greek credit for it nonetheless. This movie surprises with a lot of tiny details like that. Finding out that Brand performed all of Snow's songs himself is another one that really took me by surprise. The songs are all double-entendre heavy, but they could easily be real rock songs, and Brand may have missed his calling as a rock star.
Invariably, Get Him to the Greek is going to be compared to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the movie that spawned it. I have to say that it's a superior film, at least to me. It feels like a much tighter, more focused movie with better performances and more convincing relationships. The chemistry between all of these actors is just top-notch. Quite simply, it's one of the best comedies I've ever seen.