REVIEW: Get Him to the Greek Finds the Sweet Spot of Rock Debauchery

Russell Brand's Aldous Snow doesn't, on the other hand, find it overrated at all. And that's what makes Brand such fun to watch. Get Him to the Greek opens with a parody video that sidles so close to the reality of rock-and-roll self-importance that it barely registers as parody. Clad in a variety of unlikely costumes -- a pristine Jesus robe among them -- Snow and his bandmates (their name is Infant Sorrow) cavort through a song called "African Child." The song is intended to advertise Snow's awareness of world suffering, though it ends up backfiring on him. (In an E!-style montage detailing Snow's rise and fall, the song is deemed by blowhard media experts experts to be "the worst thing for Africa since apartheid.")

Snow takes his newfound unpopularity in lean, leggy stride, continuing to exhibit every possible permutation of spoiled, entitled, self-centered, simpering, childish rock-star behavior. Brand is reprising the character he played in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and at first, you may wonder if he's got enough notes up his sleeve to flesh out a full-length solo. He does. When Snow tries to win back his lady love (and also the mother of his son) Jackie Q., she rebuffs him -- she's now taken up with Metallica's Lars Ulrich (who appears, briefly, as himself), and she informs Snow that Lars is a real man, so in touch with his feelings that he's capable of crying for three hours straight. Snow, knowing he can't compete, reaches for the first dumb line he can grab: "We share a son. That's a bit more intimate than a crying drummer." As a snippet of spoiled rock-star logic, that's right on the nose.

Brand is terrific at sending up insane rock-star excess. But what makes the performance work is that he's got a little bit of the rock star in himself. It's not giving too much away to reveal that Aldous Snow finally does make it to the Greek Theatre for that big performance, taking the stage amid a shower of sparks. The crowd cheers; he accepts their adulation and reflects it back at them as a kind of a cocky radiance. In Get Him to the Greek, Brand doesn't just grind away at the reasons we hate pompous rock stars -- he cuts to the heart of why we love them, too, sometimes beyond reason or rationality. If rock-and-roll, or for that matter comedy, were simply about rationality, the world would be a much drearier place.

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