MOVIE REVIEW - Get Him To The Greek

Here we go again, the traveling comedy troupe that bring us a bunch of edgy, and raw comedies is at it again, with this weeks Get Him To The Greek.

GHTTG is the latest installment of the Judd Apatow group that gave us Knocked Up and bunch of similar comedies in recent years. These generally deal with lots of sex, and recreational drug use, heavy drinking and overall raunchy behavior by young adults, and GHTTG is no exception. In essence it's about an young record company executive and his idea to bring back an aging rock star from England to put on a tenth anniversary concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.

Erin (Jonah Hill) flies in London to escort our rock star (Russel Brand) back. But of course there are many stops along the way that our out of control rock star makes, and Erin is way over his head. Drugs, sex, personal appearances gone horribly wrong, you get the drift. Will they make it to the Greek in 72 hours and will the show go off? That's GHTTG.

Digging a big deeper than just our superficial story line, there are some things in this movie that are really interesting once you pull back the predictable layers. The story at the very end does take a surprising twist that makes sitting through all the poop, puke, horrible language and glorified drug use a little more worthwhile. There are some big laughs here too. What this movie does well is lampoon the entire record and Rock - n - Roll industry by making fun of it's principal players. And that's pretty funny. Even though the stereotypes are not so new, some of this works.

The real story here though is Jonah Hill. He of course is the chubby, curly headed kind from Superbad and other similar movies. I thought his performance here was really strong. Hill has put on even more weight and looks even more vulnerable as the hapless Erin, and the character is really well done. You do feel for him every step of the way, as he tries his best to negotiate his way through this mess, and his personal life too. I think if Hill has the guts to take a chance on a new acting path, there will be roles for him in better quality projects that will take him down a new avenue, and be good at it. He is so believable here. He steals the show as the straight man.

GHTTG. No Oscars here, but plenty of cash to go around. You know what you're getting when you walk in and there are no apologies made. An acquired taste - not for Nana. But for fans of the young, edgy, nonsense comedy? A real hit.