This spin-off/sequel from 2008’s ghastly romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshal was one of the worst pictures of 2010. Russell Brand plays a drug-addicted rock star and Jonah Hill plays the unfortunate music industry employee sent to look after him on his way to a major come-back concert at The Greek theatre in L.A.
Similar to the first movie featuring Brand’s character Aldous Snow, Get Him to the Greek is obnoxious and vulgar. It presents a horribly objectified view of women to an audience that will mostly be populated by teenage boys.
The film also delights in making light of hard drug abuse, and as if this wasn’t enough, sexual assault is also trivialised. The most skin-crawlingly horrible moments occur when three major characters decide to have a threesome. Any humour that may have been gleamed from such sordid material is killed off by the lack of genuinely funny writing or sympathetic characters.
Russell Brand is yet to convince me he has a talent that goes beyond saying normal words with a strange exaggerated pronunciation. His fans claim this is funny. To me it’s incredibly irritating.
The only saving grace is Damages’ Rose Byrne as Snow’s Essex-accented girlfriend, offering us a hilarious satire of the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Lily Allen. But even Byrne’s talents can’t stop this from feeling as sleazy, tasteless and misogynistic as any other Judd Apatow-backed comedy (with the exception of this year’s brilliant Bridesmaids).
Get Him to the Greek (2010), directed by Nicholas Stoller, is available on Blu-ray disc and DVD from Universal Pictures UK, Certificate 15.
7 Comments
You have got to be kidding me. GHTTG is incredible. That is all.
I really wish you’d stop listing genuinely funny films as your bottom of the barrel. this section should surely be for the likes of The Human Centipede 2 or A Serbian Film!
Not successful, much loved comedies, youre killing me here barnb! i can only image the top of your barrell to be obnoxious posho shite.
the other film i meant was Kick Ass, i have no qualms with your rating of Confessions of a Shopaholic
Good effort at hiding your identity, man, but your photo’s still there lol. A Serbian Film isn’t necessarily bottom of the barrel either lol, just F’ING SICK.
yeah shouldnt have put my real email in.. oops.
I agree that this is a bit harsh, it’s nothing special but not terrible!
Thanks for all your responses. I would just like to reply to Anthony Lord’s comment that ‘this section should surely be for the likes of The Human Centipede 2 or A Serbian Film’
The purpose of this section is for the reviewer to moan about a film that really really don’t like. It is purely their opinion, and they may be controversial choices. Below is the introductory message to the Bottom of the Barrel strand that appeared when the first article was published during the summer:
“BOTTOM OF THE BARREL’ is a new strand of articles and reviews that focus on the very worst films out there. Our ‘ARCHIVE’ section aims to promote cinema as an art and, although the reviewers may find fault with certain aspects of the film, these are the movies they feel deserve to be remembered. ‘BOTTOM OF THE BARREL’, however, serves as a warning to viewers. These are the films best left in the ex-rental bin.
N.B. The opinions expressed in these reviews are those of the writer of the particular piece, and are not necessarily shared by the rest of the film writers on The Edge, or the publication as a whole.”
Many thanks.