Brand’s Grecian gurn

Get Him To
The Greek
DIRECTED BY: Nicholas Stoller
STARRING: Jonah Hill. Russell Brand, Sean Combs, Rose Byrne
CERT: 16

The crude bro-mances just keep on coming. For a while there, The 40-Year-Old Virgin was the one to emulate. Then it was Superbad. Now everyone seems to want to make “the new Hangover” and so it looks like the genre will be with us for a while yet. More’s the pity, unless quality control improves and they start turning out more coherent efforts than Get Him To The Greek a film that offers up a decent dose of laughs but far too much lazy, uninspired crap.
Director Nicholas Stoller follows up his lacklustre 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall with this sequel of sorts, featuring that film’s lounging loverman, British rock star Aldous Snow (Brand). Jonah Hill also returns, though not in his original barman role.
Here he plays record company underling Aaron Green, who presents an intriguing money-spinning idea to his somewhat excitable boss, Sergio Roma (Combs) a 10 year anniversary show by Aldous Snow at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, scene of his finest moment, not to mention the best-selling live album.
The only snag is, Snow has fallen from favour with his fans after several poor albums and an attack of celebrity conscience that led to the release of the disastrous African Child – and the once clean living tantric master is drowning his failure and loneliness in debauchery and strong chemicals.
So the sensible, ambitious and increasingly panicky Aaron has three days to get this rock monster from London to LA, by way of New York for a slot on the Today Show.
It’s a decent plot, wrapped around several old ideas – the odd couple, the screwball, the road movie, the fish out of water, the celebrity send-up and, of course, the modern gross-out comedy.
There are times when it works very well. Hill and Brand make a good screen pairing and they throw out a number of fine improvised gags. There’s a few well handled side steps into their characters’ separate love lives Aaron’s confusing relationship with medical intern Daphne (Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men) and Snow’s breakup with pop bombshell Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), with whom he once recorded a record voted the worst album of all time.
I wouldn’t have tagged Sean Combs or P Diddy, or Puff The Magic Duderino or whatever the hell moniker he’s going by these days for a gifted comic actor but he makes a memoraable impression here as the high-strung label boss. There’s also a couple of amusing cameos from other celebs, Pink and Christina Aguilera among them, along with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, another gentleman I didn’t imagine had much of a sense of humour, certainly not at his own expense.
For all the film has going for it, however, it’s still a bit of a mess, with too much dead time, far too many tired old tricks pulled out of the bag and in the case of Colm Meaney’s rock star daddy, at least one too many dead ends.
For all of Russell Brand’s charm and talent and his fine gelling with the always enjoyable Jonah Hill I’m afraid I can still only take the man in small doses, so after a while he started to grate on my last nerve.
If you can handle more than I can and you don’t mind another chapter of producer Judd Apatow’s neverending book, Boys Learning Important Life Lessons then this might be up your street.

Shrek Forever
After
DIRECTED BY: Mike Mitchell
VOICES: Mile Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas
CERT: G

After the overstuffed, frantic and basically crap third instalment of a once brilliant franchise, I didn’t have high hopes that the final chapter of the Shrek story would be a classic, a glorious final bow. And it isn’t. But it was pleasantly surprising to find that at least it’s a more entertaining lark than the last one.
Shrek (Myers) has it all going for him a happy family, fame, fortune and friends. But he’s having a bit of a personal crisis and sometimes he longs for the days when he was his own ogre,­ free and single, king of the swamp, a beast who still struck terror in the hearts of men.
He thinks he’s getting his wish when he enters a pact with Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) but the wily old devil tricks him and, not unlike It’s A Wonderful Life, Shrek arrives instead in a world where he’s never been born and where Rumpelstiltskin rules with cackle and an evil little fist.
His old friends, of course, don’t know him though Donkey (Murphy) and especially Puss‘n’Boots (Banderas) don’t exactly look like themselves.
Fiona (Diaz) meanwhile, is fighting with the resistance against the oppressive Rumpel regime and Shrek has only 24 hours to win her heart all over again to save the world, the universe and downtrodden fairytale characters everywhere.
The Shrek yarn has well and truly run its course and if this really is the end, then all concerned have done the right thing. The kids will probably still love this and though there are some decent moments for the grown ups to enjoy mostly courtesy of Puss and Donkey as Shrek The Third betrayed, the old sharpness is gone and too much of the time that void is filled with easy gags and lazy references. It’s almost painful to see the old gang limp off like that.
But it was fun while it lasted.