Get Him to the Greek

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.

I Love You, Man

First Hit: There are some funny bits in this film along with some good serious truthful moments; however it felt long, repetitious, and overdone in parts.

Paul Rudd plays Peter Klaven a moderately successful real estate agent who has a dream of building a group of homes and stores on a bluff near downtown LA.

To finance this venture he must sell Lou Ferrigno’s home for which he has the exclusive listing. He is engaged to Zooey (played by Rashida Jones) who feels like she has hit the jackpot with Paul as her boyfriend.

As a boyfriend, Peter is thoughtful, kind, considerate, and pays attention to her. All her girlfriends think she’s so lucky but there is an underlying concern; Peter doesn't have any guy friends. The fact is that Peter doesn’t is the gist of the film. He and his fiancé decide that he needs to find some guy friends before the wedding or else the wedding party will be uneven.

In his quest to find a guy friend, he has a number of man dates. There are funny bits in some of these encounters. Then during an open house he is having for Lou’s home, he runs into Sydney (played by Jason Segel) who is blunt, insightful, and outspoken. They hit it off because in many ways they are opposite and they both love the band Rush.

Through a series of man dates, their relationship expands and eventually he asks Sydney to be his best man. However, Zooey doesn’t like that Peter is less available and pays less attention to her now that he has a guy friend to hang out with.

I found the repetition of scenes, like Peter attempting to come up with a nick name for Sydney, to be tiring and overplayed. The direction of the unevenness and the upsides of this film the responsibility of Director John Hamburg and co-writer Larry Levin. Rudd was OK as Peter; while Segel was the strongest consistent character as Sydney. I found the couple Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressly as Zooey’s best friend and husband, to be overplayed, unrealistic, and boorish.

Overall: This film’s unevenness took away from the truly funny parts and in the end, this film felt very long. It might have been better to cut 20 minutes from it by reducing extraneous and repetitive scenes.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

First Hit: I was surprised by some of the accurate realisms portrayed by Jason Segel about being dumped by his girlfriend. Additionally I enjoyed and found some of the scenes very funny.

Jason Segel not only starred in this film but also wrote it as well. I liked how Jason, as Peter, showed some balls (literally as well) by showing some of the self inflicted agony men experience when they are dumped by the love of their life.

It also shows how men can become complacent about relationships by taking things for granted. In this case, he is messy, unclean, and lies around on the couch too much when Sarah isn’t around. And only attempts to get things together when she comes around. This point is brought home again later in the film and is well made.

Peter and Sarah are working on the same TV show when the breakup happens. Sarah (played by Kristen Bell), is the star of the show and therefore Peter takes the supporting role in public. She decides she wants to be with another man and dumps Peter. Peter takes solace in sleeping with other women but ends up in Hawaii as a way to escape his depression. He meets Rachel (played by excellently by Mila Kunis) who is the hotel desk clerk who helps him out with Peter discovers that Sarah is at the same hotel with her new boyfriend.

Overall: I was cautious about this film because it could have tipped into a full-fledged sophomoric frat boy humor, but it didn’t. It held its own space and did this rather well. It is a nice fun romp.