A Movie a Day, Day 22: Nicholas Stoller’s Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek gives us too much pleasure not to be forgiven for its sins.

A Movie a Day, Day 22: Get Him to the Greek
Photo: Universal Pictures

Yes, it’s a remake of My Favorite Year. And no, that classic vehicle for Peter O’Toole’s bottomless charm and chivalry doesn’t need a tune-up. But Get Him to the Greek is more of an homage than a slavish imitation, and it gets the tone right for the most part, with plenty of comic charisma of its own.

My Favorite Year spoofed early TV variety shows and our worship of swashbuckling celebrities with loving precision, landing its satiric blows as lightly as O’Toole’s Alan Swann wielded his trademark sword. Get Him to the Greek updates the setting to the druggy world of stadium rock and the sycophantic media, gullible fans, and increasingly desperate record companies that feed on it. This time the young innocent appointed to rein in a dissolute performer is Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), a lowly employee of a big music company. Aaron’s boss, Sergio (a fiercely funny Sean Combs) gives him “your one big chance,” tasking him to see that rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, reprising the character he played in Forgetting Sarah Marshall) makes it to a concert in LA’s Greek Theatre. The sold-out concert just might be big enough to save the company and Snow’s reputation, which is starting to slip—but first Aaron has to get the star, who’s more interested in partying than performing, to show up.

That sets up what amounts to a three-day bender, punctuated by moments of self-pitying sobriety, as Aaron follows Aldous from London to Vegas to New York to L.A., as helpless to direct him as a balloon caught in a jet’s slipstream. And that’s just fine with him, for a while, since he’s just broken up with his live-in girlfriend and primed for a walk on the wild side.

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Click here to read the rest of my TimeOFF review.

This article was originally published on The House Next Door.

Elise Nakhnikian

Elise Nakhnikian has written for Brooklyn Magazine and runs the blog Girls Can Play. She resides in Manhattan with her husband.

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