What is the deal with male-centric studio comedies and their endless fascination with the debaucherous road trip? This is extremely well-worn territory, and yet comedies keep returning to it again and again. Even films that don’t follow this formula tend to include at least one sequence in which its (male) leads indulge in some sort of over-the-top depravity. There will be drugs, yelling, and crazy women wanting sex. Somebody’s going to vomit.
What is the deal with male-centric studio comedies and their endless fascination with the debaucherous road trip? This is extremely well-worn territory, and yet comedies keep returning to it again and again. Even films that don't follow this formula tend to include at least one sequence in which its (male) leads indulge in some sort of over-the-top depravity. There will be drugs, yelling, and crazy women wanting sex. Somebody's going to vomit.{{page_break}}
Did you know that when someone uses drugs, craaaazy things happen? Thank god I have The Hangover, Knocked Up, Garden State, Road Trip, Hot Tub Time Machine, Starsky and Hutch, Harold and Kumar, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Zoolander, and now Get Him to the Greek to inform me of this. I even like some of those films, but it doesn't matter. The difficulty level in creating a “hilarious” drug trip scene is so embarrassingly low. This is the worst kind of laziness and I'd be happy to never see a wacky drug trip scene again in my life.
This obsession with debauchery makes filmmakers paint in the broadest strokes imaginable, almost always at the expense of originality and believability. The little ways in which Max Fisher's dignity gets chipped away in Rushmore, for example, are far funnier and more resonant than either instance of degrading anal penetration in Greek. Call me old fashioned.
Outside of this, Get Him to the Greek isn't too bad. Like most Apatow-produced films it's too long, too loose, and too improvised. It's also funny and likeable enough to get by, unlike other picaresque adventures in testosterone such as The Hangover. I was consistently entertained and laughed with some regularity, which is much more than I can say for that film. Its tale of a regular schlub taking care of his fallen idol has pangs of Funny People as well, though Greek looks like a lesson in restraint compared to that overlong mess.
That's the biggest problem with most Apatow-branded films. Get Him to the Greek, with its short list of characters and extremely simple storyline, runs nearly two hours. It's relatively well paced, but the fact of the matter is that comedies need to really earn it if they're going to run past 90 minutes. Would Greek have been better if it were 20 minutes shorter? Yes. The same is true for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Talladega Nights, and all three films that Apatow has directed. I understand that you're working with a cornucopia of top-class comedic talent who love to improvise, but you need to have the balls to cut most of this material for the greater good of the film.
The real tragedy is that many of these films will mostly be seen on DVD in even more unwieldy “unrated” editions. This has already shown itself to be a serious problem with The 40 Year Old Virgin, which is now primarily viewed in a gargantuan 133 minute extended cut. Aside from adding countless unnecessary scenes, this version also adds several extra beats to every joke, completely deflating the comedic (and dramatic) rhythm. The added material is plenty funny, but it turns an adorably chunky film into a heaving, sweating pile of fat.
I've just realized that I've spent most of this review not complaining about things that Get Him to the Greek does wrong, but rather slightly annoying things it does that many of its peers do much worse. This is doing a bit of a disservice to the film itself, which is enjoyable enough to fit snugly into the upper-middle class of the Apatow brand. You already know if this is the kind of film that interests you, in which case you will enjoy yourself.
Overall Score: 6.70 – Okay. (6s are just okay. These movies usually have many flaws, didn’t try to do anything special, or were poorly executed. Some will still love 6s, but most prefer to just rent them. Watch more trailers and read more reviews before you decide.)
It may be lazy and unoriginal, but Get Him to the Greek manages to get by on the quality of its characters and jokes.
Siobhan Watters:
Overall Score: 7.80 — After achieving box office and critical success with 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall, director Nicholas Stoller has another hit on his hands with Get Him to the Greek. Brand's Alduous Snow is a perfect trainwreck; Hill is hilariously in over his head; and P.Diddy is simply awesome. You can read her full review here!
Tom Fronczak:
Overall Score: 5.65 — Instead of creating funny streams of conversation, Greek instead went the route of saying or doing something stupid and following it up with a funny reaction from one of the two lead actors, leaving the audience in a constant ping pong state of not laughing at a scene, and then agreeing with the funny dialogue that points out how silly something just was. That immediately cuts the laughs in half if your scenes themselves aren’t funny, which is the fatal flaw of this film. You can read his full review here!
