First Hit: There are moments that this film is really funny and there are times it felt sophomoric and I wanted the scene to move on.
Russell Brand plays Aldous Snow an aging rock star that was a wild child singer who made lots of money making rock albums then made a horribly conceived album. He decided to get clean of drugs but that didn't help his marriage or his career so he starts drinking and doing drugs again.
It is here we pick up the story because Sergio Roma (played by Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs) is a record label producer who looking for something big to create more income so that he can provide Nike Air Jordans for his six kids.
His minions have some stupid ideas but when he calls on Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), Aaron thinks that a 10th anniversary concert at the Greek Theater in LA with Aldous Snow will be a huge hit. He explains how it will be great and generate a lot of money by doing a simulcast with Facebook, Twitter and a "pay for view" cable channel.
Roma agrees and sends Green to fetch Snow and bring him back for the concert. The film has enough moments of well represented typical rock star lifestyle and its juxtaposition to a regular person’s life. There is the; I’ll do what I want when I want to do it thing.
There is the focus on “banging” as many girls as I can thing. And there is the I’ll do what it takes to get high to not feel what my life is really about stuff thing. To Green, at first it is fun but he sees the hurt and shallowness in it Snow and wonders if this is the life for him.
What detracted from the film are the sophomoric bents like the often seen Green vomiting because he can’t hold his liquor scenes.
Brand is great as Snow and held his own as a Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and Lars Ulrich version of a rock star. Hill is not an actor I find very entertaining as he appears to play the same sort of guy most of the time. He’s a semi thoughtful, unimaginative guy who longs to have a normal life and is a bit slow on the uptake. He uses his size to create sympathy and humor but there is little coming from his brain and heart. The chemistry between him and Daphne Binks (played by Elizabeth Moss) is virtually non-existent. Combs is funny and great as the music record producer. I love the dialogue about mind fucking. Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel wrote this and there are moments of truly funny, laugh out loud, scenes and dialogue which director Stoller used really well.
Overall: Where I enjoyed watching Hangover a second time with my girlfriend, this film doesn’t have the ability to be funny or interesting the second time around because the laughs are one shot and some of the stuff gets old quick.