Get Him to the Greek (4/5 Stars) June 14, 2010

A pretty good example of why it is harder to make a Great Comedy than it is to make a Great Drama.

Get Him to the Greek is a spin-off to that great romantic comedy of 2008, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The director of the first, Nicholas Stoller has come back to helm the second. This time around he is also the writer, supplanting Jason Segal while still using his original character of rock-star lothario Aldous Snow as the title “Him.” The person on the end of the imperative is music studio intern Aaron Green, played by Jonah Hill. He proposes the idea of a ten year anniversary concert in Los Angeles of the legendary Aldous Snow at the Greek Theater live album, a top-seller. The only problem is that Snow is off in London wallowing in a drunk junkie haze mired in scandal, lovelorn sorrow, and a recent musical career catastrophe. His latest album, African Child, in which he declares himself a White Christ from Outer Space, was not well liked. The potential $$$ from a comeback though warms the idea to the ruthless studio executive Sergio Roma, played by Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs. He orders Green to go to London and Get Him to the Greek in time for the big concert in three days. Complicating things is Aaron Green’s recent separation from his long term girlfriend, Daphne Banks, played by Elizabeth Moss. She is a late night nurse who is sweet enough but is so routinely exhausted by her job that she would rather watch Gossip Girl than go to rock concerts. She tells him of a recent offer for a residency in Seattle. This, of course, means that Green would have to quit his job and move. They get into an argument and leave pissed at each other just in time for Green to go to London and make some very bad decisions with the help of a party-hard rocker. 

The setup and premise of this movie has Great Comedy potential but falls short in a couple areas where admittedly it is very hard for any movie to succeed in. In other areas it is particularly successful. Showing surprisingly impressive comedic chops is P. Diddy as the music mogul. Like other Great Hollywood Comedic CEOs like Tom Cruise in “Tropic Thunder” and Alec Baldwin in “30 Rock” he carries gravitas clearly and authoritatively while at the same time brazenly flouting decorum and tolerating, oftentimes soliciting, unethical practices of his subordinates. His advice to Aaron Green: Keep Aldous Snow happy by being very agreeable and telling him you absolutely love everything he has ever done (especially African Child), do everything Snow tells you to even if its illegal and enabling, and drink all of his alcohol and smoke all his pot before he can get to it. The Ends justify the means just as long as you get him to the Greek, preferably conscious. P. Diddy orders Green to do all of these things as if he is absolutely not fucking kidding. It’s the type of early performance in a movie that makes you hope that he will have many scenes ahead. Unfortunately P. Diddy goes noticeably absent for long stretches and when he does show up, he is underused. I have never really liked P. Diddy, so I can confidently say that this is the best thing he has ever done. I hope he does more movies. 

Nicholas Stoller is a pretty good writer of comedic dialogue and when the people in the movie are talking, laughs are sure to follow. Unfortunately, unlike ‘Sarah Marshall,’ the genre of this movie is not conversational/romantic but screwball, and in the area of screwball comedy Stoller has room for improvement. What do I mean by Screwball Comedy? Screwball denotes a subgenre of Comedy that is best described as “One damn thing after another.” In this subgenre, the writers throw out the idea that everything should be as realistic as possible in order to jam as many fun and interesting things into the short frame of the movie. This is particularly useful when the “movie time” takes place within a single night, a road trip, or in this case, a three-day road trip. The story will usually have set events that take place within the movie that provide necessary exposition, emotional core, and denouement (like here the office meeting, the breakup, and the rock concert) but most of the movie has but two functions that in the best of cases will occur at the same time: Telling Jokes and “Getting us from here to there.” Most of the “Getting us from here to there” in this plot calls for travelling interspersed with some hardcore partying. Conversational humor works just fine when travelling on a plane, but not so much when you’re partying hardcore. The best thing Stoller could have done in partying scenes is use a Comedic Montage. This requires playing loud music and showing a series of physical stunts and visual gags that would take at most a couple of lines of dialogue to introduce. But apart from creative camera angles and Jonah Hill throwing up, there aren’t many jokes being told during these sequences. To make matters worse, the music being played is underwhelming. One partying montage is accompanied by “The Beach Boys.” At a time when the movie should be reaching a Fever Pitch, it feels like it is simply “Getting from here to there.” It picks up again with more conversational humor the morning after. There’s this particularly well set up scene during a ill-advised detour in Las Vegas when P. Diddy becomes personally involved. His solution is to out party the limey English bastard to the point he’ll be too exhausted to screw around anymore. Quite enjoyably a fight breaks out in the expensive Las Vegas bachelor pad. What isn’t good is that Stoller decided to play “Come On Eileen,” at a muted level during the whole thing. Dude, if you’re going to have a coked out brawl you’ve got to turn that shit up. What’s worse is that the action is slipshod and the whole thing is centered upon only a couple of jokes that are repeatedly told. Now, I don’t want too be hard on Stoller. What he was attempting to do is perhaps the toughest thing to do in a movie. It is hard to tell jokes in a fast-paced action scene. It calls for the creative business of writing the jokes, the extreme preparation that goes with shooting action sequences, and the mental wherewithal of editing to preserve continuity in story and timing in humor. It is a rare event when a movie pulls this off. (When it does, it is something to behold. Great examples are the camp raid in “Tropic Thunder,” and the dog on drugs scenes in “There’s Something About Mary.” Oftentimes the necessary level of control requires animation. Pixar and Looney Tunes make their bread and butter in this sort of thing.) 

The movie attempts to do another very hard thing by having a plot that requires several high quality original songs, because you know, Aldous Snow is a legendary rock star. None of the songs suck but none of them are chart-toppers either. Then there are several music videos that are aimed at the ‘so-bad-its-good’ area of comedy. I generally disdain that sort of thing. I would rather that they put in the effort to make them good. Again, I will stress that it is not fair to require a comedy to produce an incredible album of original songs along with well-defined characters, consistent laughs, and a coherent yet action packed story. I’m just saying if the movie had pulled it off in the way the story required them to do this movie would be one of the best movies of the year. But it didn’t so it isn’t. 

I think it might have also hurt the movie that it was a spin-off. The character of Aldous Snow here is severely hampered by his portrayal in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” as a calm, cool, and completely sober person. It is a bit of a stretch for him to have gone off the deep end as he does here and still at the same time, he hardly goes far enough. I think it would have been better if the movie didn’t try to explain the psychology of Snow’s behavior. He should have just been a rock star asshole. In comedies all you really need is one emotional core and that is easily taken care of here by Jonah Hill’s character. The fact that Snow also needed quiet scenes with his ex-girlfriend, mother, and father really took away from his ability to do crazy shit like irresponsible Rock Stars are wont to do. Perhaps it would have been better if they completely forgot that Aldous Snow was cool and sober in a previous movie and simply allowed him to be more of an antagonist. They could still cast Russell Brand; I mean they cast Jonah Hill as Aaron Green even though he was a completely different person in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” I know I didn’t care.

Jonah Hill is a good enough actor for this sort of thing. It’s good to see that he is growing into more grown-up roles. (His fellow Superbad alumnus, Michael Cera, seems to be perpetually cast as a 16 year-old virgin.) I am concerned about his weight. Don’t get me wrong, fat people are funny. But when an actor achieves that critical mass of obesity it becomes unsettling. I am sincerely concerned about Hill’s health. Not to mention it hurts his ability to do physical comedy and realistic sex scenes. He has several of both in this movie. A Rule of Thumb: If the producers don’t allow you to take off your shirt, it means you’re too fat. I like you Hill and hope you have a long life making good movies. Please lose some weight (Not all of it, fat people are funny).

Forgetting Sarah Marshall 06/04/08

An Apatow schlub played by Jason Segal is dumped by his longtime girlfriend Sarah Marshall and to rid himself of his grief he takes a vacation in Hawaii only to realize that his girlfriend and her new beau, a lothario rock star, are staying at the same hotel. Hilarity ensues.
This is the 1st classic movie of 2008. The best and funniest of the year so far. I noticed three quarters of the way through this film that I had stopped laughing so hard. I thought about it and realized that it wasn't because the movie had become less funny, I had simply started to feel so much for the characters. I had become invested in how the story would turn out for the people in it. There was real suspense. I cared. I sincerely wished that the nice big schlub played by newcomer Jason Segal would end up with the nice pretty girl played by Mila Kunis. The last time I had cared so much about a romance I was watching "Pride and Prejudice." I think that says alot for an alleged crass, obscene, sometimes gross-out comedy.
Not surprisingly this superior comedy was produced by Judd Apatow the most prolific creator of great comedies in our time. He has an immense talent for scouting new talent and providing them with the proper vehicles. In this movie he gives writer/star Jason Segal his first chance as a leading man and screenwriter. And he strikes the motherlode. Jason Segal, you might remember, has played bit parts in other Apatow flicks (remember him stark naked on the sidewalk after the earthquake in "Knocked Up") and was part of the original cast of the one season wonder TV show "Freaks and Geeks." Apatow had tried to get him better roles before but apparently the studios balked. I think it had something to do with marketing. How do you sell a big softie with average looks who gets his biggest laughs by writhing on the floor crying. He's an original character and as Roger Ebert pointed out, marketing research is based on what has worked. It's very tough to market something that is new and original, no matter how good. 
And how original this movie is. I think it proves one theory I've had (but unfortunately did not publish before it got proven.) That shock humor works both ways. You can get as big of laughs by being super nice as you can being super mean. It's what's unexpected that makes us laugh. So many people in this movie are likable super nice characters. The employees at the resort , Paul Rudd's stoned surfer, the newlyweds he meets (Jack McBrayer), his pediatrician (Steve Landesberg). It was a master stroke to make his girlfriend's new lover played magnificently by Russell Brand a really cool guy too. Having him not be a complete jerk adds to the complexity of the movie a ton. Even Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) isn't all bad. She gets the 3-dimensional character treatment too. (She also gets jokes, most of which are clips of the TV show she's in aptly titled 'Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime' where she plays a hard boiled detective opposite a gruff Billy Baldwin.
The nicest character though comes from a truly unexpected source. It's the resort customer service rep/love interest played by Mila Kunis in the best role she has ever had. Mila Kunis, you may remember, has specialized in playing self-absorbed idiots (That 70's Show, Family Guy). This performance is a complete departure from everything I've ever seen her do. She is smart, she is funny, and she is super sweet. She gives perhaps the best performance in a movie with a half dozen great performances and reminds me once again how plenty of good actors are stifled and stuck in bad scripts.
Rounding out the ensemble is the always hilarious Bill Hader and Jonah Hill, who I think also gives his best performance (never has he been so subtle.) The ability of this screenplay to juggle so many characters and give each of them good material is impressive. It speaks to the skill of Jason Segal as a writer and his humility as the star. The director and editor also make good choices. Notice how many funny lines are actually said offscreen. ("Dracula!") An inferior editor would probably have shown it and rendered the dialogue less funny. 
Overall this is a great production of true warmth and comedy. There certainly is alot of sex but I have never been more comfortable in saying that it wasn't exploitative or gratuitous. (Jason Segal certainly shows the most himself.) The rest of this summer's comedies have had the bar raised high. I wonder if the heavyweights Adam Sandler, Steve Carell, Mike Myers, Jack Black, Will Ferrel, Pixar, Ben Stiller, and Eddie Murphy can match the newcomer.