One of the pleasures of the agreeable Judd Apatow-produced comedy “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” was the character of Aldous Snow. An obnoxious British rock star, Aldous was also somehow “so effing cool,” he managed to be both the movie’s villain and the most awesome dude around.
That character has been revived for “Get Him to the Greek,” a surprisingly clumsy comedy in which Aldous takes, more or less, center stage. Skinny, hairy comedian Russell Brand returns to the role.
But the protagonist of “Get Him to the Greek” is Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), a roly-poly record-company flunky who needs to corral Aldous over the course of a lost weekend and get him from London to — that’s right — the Greek theater in Los Angeles.
Jonah Hill’s glazed deadpan is just exactly right for the ensemble comedies he’s been in (including “Sarah Marshall,” in which he played a very different role from this one). Even in an uncredited walk-on, like his mystifyingly hostile security guard in “Night at the Museum 2,” he can scrounge up laughs out of almost nothing.
Here, playing the hero, he seems a little hemmed-in: He’s reacting to Russell Brand’s outrageousness rather than creating his own mischief.
Brand, for his part, is also held back. The script, by director Nicholas Stoller, wants to find ways to explain and make us care about Aldous Snow’s copious self-abuse, drug-related and otherwise.
And so we meet Aldous’ lousy father (Colm Meaney), as well as his slutty ex-wife (Rose Byrne), who is currently shacked up with Lars Ulrich from Metallica. (Yes, Lars plays himself.) In the midst of rock-star hilarity, these things are meant to deepen the movie, I guess.
Except we don’t want to have a deep experience at this kind of picture; we want to laugh. Some of the showbiz jokes are pretty good: Aldous Snow’s pretentious music video about hunger in Africa, the single mindedness of Aaron’s boss (an amusing Sean “P. Diddy” Combs), a cameo by Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman during Aldous’ “Today Show” appearance.
But the film grows ham-handed as it goes along, with entire episodes reduced to quick montages.
True to producer Apatow’s spirit, there are a couple of scenes that trample the boundaries of taste and propriety, including a sexual interlude that drags Aaron’s girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss, “Mad Men”) into the rock ‘n’ roll spirit.
All of which comes off as more queasy than edgy; or, more importantly, funny. Somewhere in the midst of “Get Him to the Greek” is a funny movie, but what’s on screen is rushed, oddly sentimental and frequently creepy. Aldous Snow deserves better.
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