Ben Saw: Get Him to the Greek

The Judd Apatow formula strikes again. And it's pretty good.

(Site note: Apologies for the delayed posting, Henry's been away for a few days and I was not on the ball about getting this up early)



Damn, the Apatow backlash really has been going strong for a while now, hasn't it? Clearly that's partially the result of releasing some fairly self-indulgent, unsuccessful material (i.e. 'Funny People') but I get the sense that a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's been enjoying such meteoric success after years of toiling, more or less, in obscurity. Here's an original observation: we love tearing down successful people after building them up, don't we? Even moreso, we love tearing down successful people if their success rests, in part, on a formula.

And there's a certainly a formula to Judd Apatow movies; or at least to the core Apatow comedies (Virgin, Superbad, Marshall, and now 'Greek'. I hesitate to call 'Funny People' a comedy). Beyond the rotating cast of familiar faces and identifiable comic voice, the defining feature of Judd Apatow movies is that they share a dramatic arc and, most interestingly, a traditionalist, moralizing tone. If Apatow made a movie about nutrition, it would have the nebbishy lead get knocked out of his quirky, quip-worthy eating habits by a sudden event, spend an hour binging on junk food and midnight snacks, trying bizarre food combinations with random celebrities and spiraling into culinary disequilibria before ultimately realizing, after a painful encounter with the 'Spiciest Curry on Earth', that 3 square meals a day of the food you're used to (plus lots of vegetables) really is best, just like mom always said.

I really don't mind that Apatow is a scold and I don't mind that he has a formula. It's a broad formula that he's mined more-or-less successfully for laughs and some amount of pathos. We kind of know the point that he wants his movies to get to, but the process of getting there is usually fun and fairly surprising.

So it is for 'Get Him to the Greek'.

You probably know the premise already. In this case, Apatow has had one of his collaborators, Nicholas Stoller, direct a spin-off movie featuring Aldous Snow, the rock star from 'Sarah Marshall' (played by Russell Brand). Jonah Hill plays the schlubby Judd Apatow protagonist of the day as a young idea man for a struggling major record label who has the idea of revitalizing Snow's stagnant career with a big concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Hill, recently kinda-sorta broken up with his long-standing girlfriend (the smart girl from 'Mad Men'), is tasked to retrieve the self-destructive, hard-partying Brand from London and get him to New York followed by LA for the concert. And he only has 3 days.

So it's basically a road comedy, do I even need to say that 'hijinx ensue'? Regardless, the hijinx are pretty funny, themed around the kamikaze rock star lifestyle of showbiz culture and Hill's fish-out-of-water experiences therein, plus the script is peppered with the typically witty one-liners that Apatow's team seems to never run out of. But it's is a rock & roll movie so the jokes inevitably center around sex (an Apatow staple) and drugs (where some of the movie's best material comes from). This is the most anarchic of the core Apatow movies and it's most successful when it moves away from the squirm-inducing 'awkward humor' that this crew seems to love and instead goes totally nuts (a drug freakout/fight sequence in Las Vegas being the best example).

The script never really finds a groove, making clunky lurches between the absurd, the semi-realistic humor that Apatow clearly favors and the painfully sincere moments that all of these movies have contained. The characterization suffers as a result, but there's still plenty of laughs to be had. The cast is not bad, but certainly not totally on-point. Jonah Hill has the difficult task of being the straight man, a role he's just not up to. Not that he's bad, but he doesn't have much charisma and lacks the acting chops to carry the dramatic scenes very well. Brand clearly slays for a lot of people, whereas I simply find him 'funny' but I was comparatively impressed by his ability to ground a gonzo character and give Snow emotional depth. The rest of the cast is ok and has some real bright point, but isn't the best example of this crew's ability to find comedic talent for small roles. 'Mad Men' girl (okay, fine, I'll look it up.......Elisabeth Moss) is given an uninteresting role and doesn't do much with it. Many of the employees of the record label seem like missed opportunities for good jokes. There's a ton of quick celebrity cameos, with the highlight probably being a hilariously out of place Paul Krugman. Going back to the major players: Rose Byrne plays a one-note raunchy joke and is an unbelievably good sport about it while Colm Meaney has a hit-and-miss turn as Snow's father.

And then there's Diddy (nee Puffy nee Puff Daddy nee Sean Combs). Oh my gosh, he's absolutely the highlight of this movie. More than just a cameo, he plays Sergio, the owner of the record label and, after a so-so first scene, kills throughout the rest of the movie. He was the reason I was wary of seeing the movie since I figured he'd be too stiff and self-regarding to work well in a comedy, but looking back at his career that clearly wasn't fair. First of all, he was a key part of the team that made 'Notorious' (the B.I.G. biopic) and the character of Sean Combs in that movie is often a pretty blistering self-parody so he can't be too averse to making himself part of the joke. And, honestly, 'Bad Boy for Life' is a hilarious music video so the signs were there. Anyway, I'm not certain this movie is worth seeing without Diddy. With him it's among the better comedies of the year.


Grade: B


Best Scene: I'm sure many would say the 'Furry Walls' sequence, but I have to give it to a brief exchange between Diddy and Pharrell.